Fortunes Quotes
More Fortunes Quotes
I've opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself was not what I was after.
daniel boone— As quoted in Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (1993) by John Mack Faragher p. 301
In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.
thomas malthus— Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 437
My pride fell with my fortunes.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599-1600), Act I, scene 2.
If you herald some turn in our fortunes, if you bring us some measure of grace thanks, unicorn … And even if you do not, thanks for the brightness of your company at a dark time .
— Roger Zelazny, in the Chronicles of Amber novel Sign of the Unicorn (1975), Corwin, in Ch. 5
I see men's judgments are A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act III, scene 13, line 31
That yearan ill wind blew over the cityand threatened to destroy flowerpots, family fortunes, reputations, true love, and several types of virtue.
William (Joseph) Kennedy— 2002 Roscoe, opening lines.
I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty- three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks? The work is the finish, the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized nations of the world, and it has been accomplished in a way that is thoroughly American. I am content.
Robert Edwin Peary— 1909 Diary entry, Apr. Quoted inTheNorth Pole (published1910).
A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its independent value.
walter pater— Ch. 6 (Marius the Epicurean (1885))
While many a lovely ship below sailed byOn unknown errand, kempt and leisurely;And after each, oh, after each, my heartFled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart,I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wideThat might befall their beauty and their pride…
vita sackville-west— "Sailing Ships", p. 162
The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.
Adam Smith— Chapter I, Part III, p. 821
In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?
Adam Smith— Chapter I, Part III, p. 824
I … thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.
Alain de Botton— p 102-103
If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.
Denis Diderot— Article on Wealth
They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are rough-and-ready proles, laughing along with us at the efforts of our social "betters" to reform and improve us. That they are often, in fact, people of privilege doing their utmost to boost the fortunes of a political party that is the traditional tool of the privileged is a contradiction that does not trouble them.
thomas frank— Ibid. (p. 116)
If you'd asked me as a kid how rich people became poor, I'd have said by spending all their money. That's how it happens in books and movies, because that's the colorful way to do it. But in fact the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments.
paul graham— "How To Lose Time And Money", July 2010
Keynes disdained inside information in fact, he once declared that Wall Street traders could make huge fortunes if only they would disregard their "inside" information and his own oracles were nothing but his minute scrutiny of balance sheets, his encyclopedic knowledge of finance , his intuition into personalities, and a certain flair for trading.
robert heilbroner— Chapter IX, John Maynard Keynes, p. 248-249
In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.
— Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 437
The way was long and weary, But gallantly they strode, A country lad and lassie, Along the heavy road. The night was dark and stormy, But blithe of heart were they, For shining in the distance The lights of London lay. O gleaming lights of London, that gem of the city's crown; What fortunes be within you, O Lights of London Town!
— George R. Sims, song in Lights of London.
In its long history Delhi has been on several occasions the victim of military occupation accompanied by pillage and rapine, and these occasions have sometimes altered the course of the city’s fortunes, both materially and culturally. One such occasion was its capture by Qutubuddin Aibak on behalf of Sultan Muizud-Din Muhammad-ibn-Sam of Ghur in 1192 or 1193. Others, much later, were Nader Shah’s capture of the city in 1739, followed by its occupation by Ahamd Shah Durrani, the British in 1803, and the destruction which accompanied the uprising of 1857 and its suppression.
— Rakesh Kumar Bhatt, in History and Development of Libraries in India, Mittal Publications, 1 January 1995, P.172
And what of your own fortunes, gentlemen? The last circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers, and mutineers. You know nothing of Hell.
— Captain Jack Sparrow and Twigg from the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
If divine becoming were complete, God's kenosis --God's self-emptying for the sake of love--would be total. In this pandeistic view, nothing of God would remain separate and apart from what God would become. Any separate divine existence would be inconsistent with God's unreserved participation in the lives and fortunes of the actualized phenomena.
— William C. Lane, "Leibniz's Best World Claim Restructured," American Philosophical Journal, January 2010, volume 47, issue 1, page 67.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness, and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
Woodrow Wilson— War Message to Congress. April 2, 1917.
An you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.
— Fabian, scene v
Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
walt disney— “What Mickey Means to Me” (1948)
fortunes made buying and selling securities have underwritten economic revolutions.
aaron c. brown— Chapter 4, A Brief History of Risk Denial, p. 82 (See also: Rothchilds..)
