chance quotes

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

-Anonymous
  Review of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! wired to theatre critic Walter Winchell by one of his informants after its pre-Broadway tryout in New Haven. Quoted in Peter Hay Broadway  Anecdotes (1989).

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

-Arnold, Matthew
  The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'Resignation', l.247^8.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.6.

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)
Ecclesiastes 9:11

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
  Hymn.

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
  In Cold Blood, ch.4.

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

-Drayton, Michael
  Poems Lyrick and Pastorall,'To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, His Ballad of  Agincourt', describing Henry V's expedition to France,1415.

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

-Dryden,John
  Alexander's Feast, l.85^6.

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

-Fields, Dorothy
  'A Fine Romance', song featured in the film Swing Time (music by  Jerome Kern).

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
  Through Nature to God.

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
controversial plays  and revues  deal with political  themes.  His plays   include  Accidental   Death   of   an   Anarchist   (1970)   and Trumpets  and  Raspberries  (1984).  He  was  awarded  the  Nobel prize for literature in1997.

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
Free to Choose (with Rose Friedman).

'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
  Harry Morgan's dying words. To Have and Have Not.

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)
  'Invictus', collected in In Hospital (1903).

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
  Remark,16 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

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
  National radio broadcast on the surrender of  Japan, 2 Sep.

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

-Mallarme¤  , Ste¤  phane
   Title of poem, in Cosmopolis, May.

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

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.681^4.

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

-Milton,John
  God. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.172^3.

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
  Speech at the inauguration of the Faculty of Science, University of Lille,7 Dec.

31 Quotes found. Displaying quotes 1 through 20

«>»

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2005 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.