Luck Quotes III

LUCK QUOTES III

quotations about luck

Indeed, there is hardly a word in the vocabulary which is more cruelly abused than the word "luck." To all the faults and failures of men, their positive sins and their less culpable shortcomings, it is made to stand a godfather and sponsor. We are all Micawbers at heart, fancying that "something" will one day "turn up" for our good, for which we have never striven. Go talk with the bankrupt man of business, who has swamped his fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of energy, and you will find that he vindicates his wounded self-love by confounding the steps which he took indiscreetly with those to which he was forced by "circumstances," and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit the incarcerated criminal, who has imbrued his hands in the blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes, and you will find that, slumping the temptations which were easy to avoid with those which were comparatively irresistible, he has hurriedly patched up a treaty with conscience, and stifles its compunctious visitings by persuading himself that, from first to last, he was the victim of circumstances. Go talk with the mediocre in talents and attainments, the weak-spirited man who, from lack of energy and application, has made but little headway in the world, being outstripped in the race of life by those whom he had despised as his inferiors, and you will find that he, too, acknowledges the all-potent power of luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the victim of ill-fortune. In short, from the most venial offense to the most flagrant, there is hardly any wrong act or neglect to which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation. It has been truly said that there is a fine generality in the expression--a power of any meaning or no meaning--which fits it for all purposes alike. It is the great permanent non-papal, and self-granted indulgence of all mankind.

WILLIAM MATHEWS

"Good and Bad Luck", Hints on Success in Life