top of page
Fortune Quotes


"Well, if Fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear."


"Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."


"Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own fortune, and he inherits his own past."


"Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left."


"A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad."


"I've had ample contact with lawyers, and I'm convinced that the only fortune they ever leave is their own."


"A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind."


"It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training."



"And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it."


"The songs certainly have not made my fortune, but I am still grateful for the royalties when they come in."


"Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others."


"Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune."


"When Elvis was performing, you just tried to figure out a way to get there. I think he set all the records and anyone that has ever had the good fortune to see him, you know what it's like to try to get in to see Elvis. It was impossible, practically."


"It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task."


"Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites."


"Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not."


"I had the good fortune of speaking with Orson Wells many decades ago and he said 'Success is primarily luck anyway.' And I have been very lucky. Of course, Orson Wells was enormously talented and brilliant - so who am I to argue with him!"


"Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders."


"The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips."


"Fortune is like glass - the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken."


"The more we take the less we become, the fortune of one man means less for some."


"Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us."


"One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune."


"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm."


"The responsibilities which are imposed by rank and privilege and good fortune can... become very onerous indeed."


"Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, he had not the method of making a fortune."
bottom of page