chance

'A man†ain't got no hasn't got any can't really isn't any way out† One man alone ain't got†no chance.

—Hemingway, Ernest Millar

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony, not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear,'Whatever Is, is.'

—Pope, Alexander

Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns; next him high arbiter Chance governs all.

—Milton,John

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

—Pope, Alexander

'Alf Todd,'said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery,'has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat's left ear with a red-hot needle.'

—Plum

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits pre¤  pare¤  s. Where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind.

—Pasteur, Louis

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned† A man in a jail has moreroom, better food, and commonly bettercompany.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

—Thoreau, Henry David

Inside this Hollywood playboy is a someway decent actor waiting for a chance to prove it. But, since Hollywood will never give me that chance, I drink to

—Fo, Dario

The element of chance†is expelled. Nobody would now waste his time in theorizing about a fortuitous concourse of atoms.We have so far spelled out the history of creation as to see that all has been done in strict accordance with law. The method has been the method of evolution, and the more we study it the more do we discern in it intelligible coherence.

—Fiske,John

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

—Austen,Jane

Fate,Time,Occasion,Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless?öno, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Even an attorney of modest talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game ofchance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.

—Capote,Truman

A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. A new era is upon us† We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

—MacArthur, Douglas

I might as well play bridge with my old maid aunts I haven't got a chance This is a fine romance.

—Fields, Dorothy

He was a black Irish type, with centuries of rebelliousness behind him, and I decided to chance it.

—Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)

Pantagrue¤  lisme†est certaine gaiete¤   d'esprit confite en me¤  pris des choses fortuites. Pantagruelism is a certain liveliness of mind made in contempt of chance happenings.

—Rabelais, Fran c° ois

The price that the market sets on the services of our resources is similarlyaffected bya bewildering mixture of chance and choice. Frank Sinatra's voice was highly valued intwentieth-century United States.Would it have been highly valued in twentieth-century India, if he had happened to be born and to live there?

—Friedman, Milton

I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn and quarteredöwhich was done thereöhe looking as cheerfully as any man could do in that condition† Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at Whitehall and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross.

—Pepys, Samuel

Necessity and chance Approach not me, and what I will is fate.

—Milton,John

Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from chance, have conquered fate.

—Arnold, Matthew

No girls, no legs, no jokes, no chance.

—Anonymous

   Fair stood the wind for France When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry.

—Drayton, Michael

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

—Shaw, George Bernard

Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star.

—Tennyson

All my hope on God is founded He does still my trust renew, Me through change and chance he guideth, Only good and only true. God unknown, He alone Calls my heart to be his own.

—Bridges, Robert Seymour

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

—Bible (Old Testament)

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody but unbowed.

—Henley,W(illiam) E(rnest)

Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of chance below.

—Dryden,John

Un coup de de¤  s n'abolira jamais le hasard. A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

—Mallarme¤  , Ste¤  phane