chance Quotes

“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?”

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

“Not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half.”

“The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe.”

“The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance.”

″‘Like you said, it’s going to be bad no matter how you slice it. And whatever Peeta wants, it’s his turn to be saved. We both owe him that.’ My voice takes on a pleading tone. ‘Besides, the Capitol hates me so much, I’m as good as dead now. He still might have a chance.‘”

The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn’t willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high.

“But what about when they got there? Bahumat was supposed to be incredibly powerful. Even so, considering the legion of fierce fairies surrounding her, Kendra liked her odds.”

“When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of the strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance.”

“Better to stay alive,” I said. “At least while there’s a chance to get free.”

“For Ulbrickson, there was one overriding, and dark, fact to be confronted: he had failed again to make good on his public promises. It was very much an open question whether he was going to get another chance.”

“Heaven is what you mix all the days of your life, but you call it dreams. You have one chance to buy your Heaven with all the intents and ethics of your life. That is why everyone considers Heaven such a lovely place. Because it is dreams, special dreams, in which you exist. What you have to do is live up to them.”

“So much of love is chance. There’s something scary and wonderful about that.”

“Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it’s a sin if you don’t reach back... I’m telling you.”

″‘There’s Don and Eva,’ Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. ‘Make them take their chance!’

“I’ll be a great doctor with excellent bedside skills. I’ll be perfectly happy. But something about Natasha makes me think my life could be extraordinary.”

″... since there was no indication whatever to guide our choice, we were obliged to trust to chance.”

“One of the sweetest fruits of victory, after sleep and looting, must be the chance to ignore no-parking signs.”

“Everyone’s equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket.”

“He chanced on Emily to cast his eye And, as he did, he blenched and gave a cry”

“I hardly knew Hannah Baker. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to know her more than I had the chance. […] [W]e never had the chance to get closer. And not once did I take her for granted. Not once.”

“Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one.”

“Everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”

“If anarchy, therefore, were the inevitable consequence of rejecting the new Constitution, it would be infinitely better to incur it, for even then there would be at least the chance of a good government rising out of licentiousness. ”

“Perhaps somewhere, someone has done the research, has calculated the precise odds of a newborn child in the United States of America accidentally being given to the wrong parents. I suspect the likelihood is similar to the chances of being struck by lightning.”

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

“When you get up every day, put on your protective armor. Don’t leave your day to chance. Take possession of it and surrender it to the Lord. Don’t let it get out of control and give the enemy an invitation to have input.”

“On his way home, Nicki saw a white shape in the distance. It was his lost mitten silhouetted against the blue sky.”

“Must we turn to the anthropic principle for an explanation? Was it all just a lucky chance? That would seem a counsel of despair, a negation of all our hopes of understanding the underlying order of the universe.”

″‘This is my chance to ride her,’ he thought. He climbed on the top bar of the fence and jumped on Gem’s back. The bar broke with a loud crack and scared the mare. She threw Willie off, jumped over the broken bar and galloped away.”

“Now he was on his feet and about to fly. William, although nervous, felt his confidence flooding back. This was a chance, and up to now he had never been given even that.”

“She would go as a single woman who must work for her living. Her best chance, she had decided, lay in seeking employment as a governess in one of the wealthy families. She liked teaching children, and hopefully there might be a library where she could extend her own learning as well as that of her charges. Whatever befell, there would be a blue sky overhead, and the warmth and color and fragrance and beauty that her heart craved.”

“Bulbo had carried a rose in his mouth all the time of the dismal ceremony. It was a fairy rose, and he was told by his mother that he ought never to part with it. So he had kept it between his teeth, even when he laid his poor head upon the block, hoping vaguely that some chance would turn up in his favour.”

“They lost each other. And perhaps just now, just by chance, they found each other again.”

“I gave myself three more seconds to look at him, and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life. And I’ve spent the last eleven years being angry and self-righteous. But at the end of the day, he tore a hole in us, and fate ripped it wide open.”

“That’s my brave girl. It’s better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world.

“Yes, he is small, but he is quick and willing, and kind-hearted, too, and then he wishes very much to come, and his father would like it; and I know the master would like to give him the chance.

Very interesting to know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance?