# Chance

Quotations about chance.

## Quotes

* Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.
** Matthew Arnold, "Human Life", line 18, in Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (London: B. Fellowes, 1852), p. 99.
* People who canalise their lives and prearrange their enjoyments lose much of the enchantment which attends the guiding beneficence of chance.
** Alfred Austin, Lamia's Winter-Quarters (London: Macmillan and Co., 1898), p. 96.
* Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. In its carelessness it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man.
** Elizabeth Bowen, The Little Girls (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964), p. 276.
* Nothing in this world happens by chance.
** Paulo Coelho, Veronica Decides to Die (1998).
* 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.
** Ecclesiastes 9:11, King James Bible.
* Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.
** Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
** Théophile Gautier, La croix de Berny (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855), p. 28.
* People fail to appreciate how many chances they have to experience something coincidental.
** Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-02-911706-2 (1991), p. 176
* Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
** William Ernest Henley, "Invictus" (1875), line 7, in A Book of Verses (London: David Nutt, 1888), p. 56.
* Chance and Time are ever twain.
** William Ernest Henley, "Ballade of Truisms", line 27, in Ballades and rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestina, Villanelles, &c., compiled by Gleeson White (London: Walter Scott, 1887), p. 80.
* The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a roundabout name for chance.
** William James, The Dilemma of Determinism, (1884), p.153.
* Anyone who won't take a chance now and then isn't worth a damn.
** Ernest King, as quoted by Thomas B. Buell in Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (1980), p. 105
* What power was this—chance, will you say? But chance, what else can it mean Than the hidden Cause of things by human reason unseen?
** Lewis Morris, "Evensong", line 25, in Songs of Two Worlds: Third Series (London: Henry S. King, 1875), p. 23
* In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
** Louis Pasteur, in a lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854); reported in Houston Peterson, A Treasury of the World's Great Speeches (1954), p. 473.
** Variant translation: Chance favors the prepared mind.
* Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.
** Ivars Peterson, The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997) ISBN 0-471-16449-6, p. 188
* Randomness, chaos, uncertainty, and chance are all a part of our lives. They reside at the ill-defined boundaries between what we know, what we can know, and what is beyond our knowing. They make life interesting.
** Ivars Peterson, The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997) ISBN 0-471-16449-6, p. 202
* Le hasard est aveugle, et seul il est le père de la création.
** Chance is blind, and is the sole author of creation.
** X. B. Saintine, Picciola (1836), Book I, Ch. III.
* Scire debet quid petat ille, qui sagittam vult mittere, et tunc derigere ac moderari manu telum. Errant consilia nostra, quia non habent, quo derigantur. Ignoranti, quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est. Necesse est multum in vita nostra casus possit, quia vivimus casu. Quibusdam autem evenit, ut quaedam scire se nesciant. Quemadmodum quaerimus saepe eos, cum quibus stamus, ita plerumque finem summi boni ignoramus adpositum.
** The archer must know what he is seeking to hit; then he must aim and control the weapon by his skill. Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Chance must necessarily have great influence over our lives, because we live by chance. It is the case with certain men, however, that they do not know that they know certain things. Just as we often go searching for those who stand beside us, so we are apt to forget that the goal of the Supreme Good lies near us.
** Seneca the Younger, Epistle LXXI. In: Seneca, Epistles, Volume II: Epistles 66-92. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Loeb Classical Library, page 74-75. Archived from the original on October 23, 2024.
* Times go by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
** Robert Southwell (1561-1595), Times go by Turns.
* Chance is a funny thing and it is easily mistaken for portent.
** Chris Stedman, Faitheist (2012), Chapter 5
* Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head — which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead — aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.
** Colin Wilson in Spider World: The Desert, p. 26 (1987)

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 92-93.
* How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!
** Philip James Bailey, Festus (1839), A Country Town.
* Perhaps it may turn out a sang, Perhaps turn out a sermon.
** Robert Burns, Epistle to a Young Friend.
* Le hasard c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer.
** Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.
** Anatole France, Le Jardin d'Epicure (1894), p. 132. Quoted "Le hasard, en definitive, c'est Dieu".
* I shot an arrow into the air It fell to earth I knew not where; For so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight.
** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Arrow and the Song.
* Next him high arbiter Chance governs all.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 909.
* Or that power Which erring men call chance.
** John Milton, Comus (1637), line 587.
* Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain, Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade.
** Walter Scott, Hail to the Chief, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto II. Quoted by Senator Vest in nominating Bland in Chicago.
* Chance will not do the work—Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us towards the port May dash us on the shelves.—The steersman's part is vigilance, Blow it or rough or smooth.
** Walter Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, Chapter XXII.
* I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through the ashes of my chance.
** William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act V, scene 2, line 173.
* Against ill chances men are ever merry; But heaviness foreruns the good event.
** William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 2, line 82.
* But as the unthought-on accident is guilty To what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows.
** William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 549.
* Your worthiness is the result of chance.
** Sumerian proverb, Collection XVIII at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BC.
* Quam sæpe forte temere eveniunt, quæ non audeas optare!
** How often things occur by mere chance, which we dared not even to hope for.
** Terence, Phormio, V. 1. 31.
* A lucky chance, that oft decides the fate Of mighty monarchs.
** James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,285.
* Er spricht Unsinn; für den Vernünftigen Menschen giebt es gar keinen Zufall.
** He talks nonsense; to a sensible man there is no such thing as chance.
** Ludwig Tieck, Fortunat.
* Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
** Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary.

## Dialogue

    Two-Face: This is my world now... A dichotomy of order and chaos, just like me.
    Grace: Harvey, what's happened to your mind? Your feelings? You used to listen to your feelings.
    Two-Face: This is what I listen to now. Chance, Grace. Chance is everything. Whether you're born or not. Whether you live or die. Whether you're good or bad. It's all arbitrary.
    Grace: That's nonsense, Harvey. Was it chance that made you District Attorney? Was it chance that made you fall in love with me? Take control of your life, Harvey. You don't need a coin...
   * Batman: The Animated Series, "Two Face, Part 2", (September 28, 1992); teleplay by Randy Rogel

## See also

* Danger
* Fortune
* Gambling
* Hope
* Luck
* Opportunity
* Randomness
* Risk
* Uncertainty