Quotes About Chance

then he looked at my T-shirt and saw Byron's picture on it and he quoted She Walks in Beauty, which is like my favorite poem next to the one by Baudelaire about his girlfriend being nothing but worm food, except that Lily called that one first because Baudelaire is her fave poet and so she got the shirt with him on it, even though Byron is way more scrumptious and I would do him on sharp gravel if I had the chance. --from The Chronicles of Abby Normal

Fate does not favor the dim.

Perhaps there is a reason that there is no fool piece on the chessboard. What action, a fool? What strategy, a fool? What use, a fool? Ah, but a fool resides in a deck of cards, a joker, sometimes two. Of no worth, of course. No real purpose. The appearance of a trump, but none of the power: Simply an instrument of chance. Only a dealer may give value to the joker.

Who is it who decides that one man should live and another should die? My life wasn't worth any more than his, but he's the one who's buried, while I get to enjoy at least a few more hours above the ground. Is it chance, random and cruel, or is there some purpose or pattern to all this, even if it lies beyond our ken?

fate has a cruel sense of humor

If we are to tempt fate, then let us not be cowards about it.

No one can escape fates design.

Who is it who decides that one man should live and another should die? My life wasn't worth any more than his, but he's the one who's buried, while I get to enjoy at least a few more hours above the ground. Is it chance, random and cruel, or is there some purpose or pattern to all this, even if it lies beyond our ken?

Qué probabilidades había de que los dos se hubieran encontrado dentro de aquella inmensa galaxia?

Any odds are good odds for the damned

One of us needs to get laid. Just one of us? What are the odds of both of us getting laid?

You play crotch roulette, you're gonna hit double zero once in a while.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake.

There was no plot... and I discovered it by mistake.

But it's atheists who say that the world wasn't made by anyone, and you say you're not an atheist . . . I'm not because I can't bring myself to believe that all these things we see around us—the way trees and fruits grow, and the solar system, and our brains—came about by chance. They're too well made. And therefore there must have been a creating mind. God.

Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It's very boring to talk about winners. The real literature always talks about losers. Madame Bovary is a loser. Julien Sorel is a loser. I am doing only the same job. Losers are more fascinating. Winners are stupid … because usually they win by chance

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it.

Sir, be proud: today you came close to a happy death; and behave in the future with the same nonchalance, knowing that the soul dies with the body. Go then to death after having savored life. We are animals among animals, all children of matter, save that we are the more disarmed. But since, unlike animals, we know we must die, let us prepare for that moment by enjoying the life that has been given us by chance and for chance.

But chance has a taste for conspiracy.

Il n'existe pas de technique de l'oubli, nous en sommes encore aux processus naturels de hasard – lésions cérébrales, amnésie ou l'improvisation manuelle, que sais-je, un voyage, l'alcool, la cure de sommeil, le suicide.

Yes. Mankind can't endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. So a cosmic plot has to be found—God, angels, devils. Synarchy performs the same function on a lesser scale.

He was still there when, having seen history now as a place rich in whims and incomprehensible plots for Reasons of State, he learned from Saint-Savin how treacherous was the great machine of the world, plagued by the iniquities of Chance.

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing—you can always repent, atone—but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing. I

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing—you can always repent, atone—but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.