Reversal of fortune

“ I do not speak only (says the poet) of riches and dominions, and such like gratuities of Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume. Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn—infinite prayers and vows which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. ”

“ Of course, if the business is successfully accomplished we shall get everything back: but if the same evil fortune keeps us down, will you be so foolish as to throw away even the poor remains of your fortune? ”

“ Let Fortune strike down a victim, and even the heathen cries, 'This is the hand of God!' But where Fortune brings no vicissitude; where her wheel runs smooth, dropping wealth or honours as it rolls—where Affliction centres its work within the secret, unrevealing heart—there, even the wisest man may not readily perceive by what means Heaven is admonishing, forcing, or wooing him nearer to itself. ”

“ You cannot transfer the skill, sagacity, prudence, foresight, which lie concealed in your wealth. It meant a great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. In climbing to your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions intact. You had the power which comes only from experience, and which alone enables you to stand firm on your dizzy height. Your fortune was experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it will be a temptation, an anxiety, which will probably dwarf him. ”

“ And how we sorrow over our losses – losses which fall heavily upon us, and yet seem still more heavy! And finally, though Fortune may leave our property intact, whatever we cannot gain in addition, is sheer loss! ”

“ As to what the future's uncertain lot has in store, why should I demand of Fortune that she give, rather than demand of myself that I should not crave? And why should l crave? Shall I heap up my winnings, and forget that man's lot is unsubstantial? ”

“ Will you go to the millionaire who has built up his vast fortune by the ruin of hundreds of families, and speak to him of the beauty of self-sacrifice and the splendour of self-surrender? The answer of people of the selfish type is: Why should I sacrifice myself for the future? ”

“ A hundred temptations are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense—tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. ”

“ Such are the blessings to be obtained by the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from their thrones, and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber undisturbed in the elysium of poverty.
If these authors do not deceive us, nothing can be more absurd than that perpetual contest for wealth which keeps the world in commotion; nor any complaints more justly censured than those which proceed from want of the gifts of fortune, which we are taught by the great masters of moral wisdom to consider as golden shackles, by which the wearer is at once disabled and adorned ”

“ Fortune-tellers are rife amongst them—those sages whose comprehensive view knows the past, the present, and the future. They seek unto familiar spirits, that peep and mutter, for the living to the dead. ”

“ Was it not an ordination that called upon men to take fortune in their own hands, when Fate lavished her rewards on this low and creeping thing, that could only enter even Vice by its sewers and alleys? ”

“ In playing for stakes the desire to win money had really not been my impelling motive, but the evil fascination which the demon of fortune always possesses had led me to commit an act which, committed under less favorable circumstances, and upon a larger scale, might have ruined my character irretrievably. ”

“ You must know that I have nothing in the world except my fortune, and that may leave me to-morrow. By myself I do not dread the reverses of fortune, but I should be wretched if, after linking your fate with mine, you were forced to undergo any privation. ”

“ And although it is most desirable that fortune should remain forever in the most brilliant possible condition, nevertheless, the equability of life excites less interest than those changeable conditions wherein prosperity suddenly revives out of the most desperate and ruinous circumstances. ”

“ They affirmed, those who lived with fewest things and were contented, most nearly approached God, who wants nothing. They voluntarily despised riches, glory, and nobility, as foolish shows and vain fictions, that had no true and solid worth or happiness in them. They made all things to be good and evil, and flatly denied the idle stories of fortune and chance. ”

“ In this race for riches, whether along the peaceful avenue of economy or jostling in the streets of speculation, where comes in the Pursuit of Happiness? Riches, as I have shown, are and can be nothing more than means to this end, and those who, through avarice, greed, or rapacity, make them the end and aim of their aspirations, trade gold for dross. Scarcely less is the error of those who are ever postponing the hour of enjoyment until a certain sum is reached, and their fortune can be rounded off with additional thousands. ”

“ He resolved to put an end to the life he was leading, to consume the balance of his fortune, which was reduced every day by taxes to the profit of the enemy; in short, to drown his sorrow in drunkenness, and to kill himself or brutalize himself in debauchery. ”

“ Or does your justice, power, or prescience fail, When the good suffer and the bad prevail? What worse to wretched virtue could befal, If Fate or giddy Fortune governed all? Nay, worse than other beasts is our estate: Them, to pursue their pleasures, you create ”

“ But after a deal of blundering and being blundered up and down the world’s by-ways I have learned and know by heart now these two fundamentals: there is nothing so unprofitable as to speculate in terms of “might have been;” and fortune favors the man who favors fortune. ”

“ Avarice, as well as wrath, sows the storm only to reap the whirlwind.
I am growing serious upon this subject, but I cannot help it. This portion of my history dwells on my remembrance with gloom; it keeps me moralizing over the career of my neighbours. When I see or hear of a man who is bending all his energies to the acquisition of a fortune, and is already the master of his thousands, I ask, "What has become of his sons?" ”

“ We sacrifice to this fortune, our estates, our repose, our years, perhaps unprofitably; and if we arrive to possess its favours, we purchase the short-liv’d enjoyment, sometimes at the expence of our liberty, and sometimes of our lives. But, suppose all our greatness should continue as long as we liv’d, yet it would at least expire with our selves. And what use of their Grandeur have those great Favourites made, who never beheld the course of their fortune interrupted? ”

“ One must give back because if all the unjust victors of life, all the egotistical holders of the public fortune, were to restore the wealth that they squander for their personal pleasures—the great estates, the great industrial enterprises, the roads, the towns—peace would be restored to-morrow, love would flower once more among men, and there would be such an abundance of possessions that not one single being would be left in penury. ”

“ But magnanimous thoughts have so dimmed the Eyes of many, that forgetting the very essence of Fortune, and the vicissitude of good and evil, they apprehend no bottom in felicity; and so have been still tempted on unto mighty Actions, reserved for their destructions. For Fortune lays the Plot of our Adversities in the foundation of our Felicities, blessing us in the first quadrate, to blast us more sharply in the last. ”

“ Wealth, when lost, may be regained in many ways; but life in none. A broken fortune may be repaired; a cut throat can never be joined again. But why should I preach to you thus? Here is a remedy for your misfortunes. ”

“ We frequently hear that great reverses of fortune elicit and develop resources of character which under what are called happier circumstances had remained dormant and unknown. I am strongly disposed to attribute much of this result to purely physical changes, and that our days of prosperity are seasons of inordinate excitement, with all the bodily ills that accompany such a state. If it be so hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, is it not that his whole nature has been depraved and perverted by the consummate selfishness that comes of power? ”

“ Reverses of fortune might be far more easily supported, if they did not entail, as their inevitable consequence, the association with those all of whose tastes, habits, and opinions run in a new and different channel. ”

“ Hence it is, that some of the ancients have declared Fortune to be a cause unknown that cannot be foreseen by the human reason. But according to the Platonics, who have approached yet nearer to the true reason of it, it is thus defined: Fortune is a cause by accident, in those things which are done for some end, and which are of our election. ”

“ That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.—Johnson.
Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.—Æschylus. ”

“ Yet we often find that in the light of fuller knowledge or subsequent experience, the fortune which seemed evil was really good fortune in the making, that the chance act or encounter was too momentous in its consequences to be regarded as other than ordained. ”

“ So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. ”

“ On the other hand, if he treats the lowering of his means as a calamity, which is the usual case, lamenting his fate, railing against fortune and encouraging the longing for gain—an attitude of mind which is only the outcome of his unlimited faith in the power of money—the result, naturally enough, will be despair. ”

“ If the general disposition of things be estimated by the representation which every one makes of his own estate, the world must be considered as the abode of sorrow and misery; for how few can forbear to relate their troubles and distresses? If we judge by the account which may be obtained of every man's fortune from others, it may be concluded, that we all are placed in an elysian region, overspread with the luxuriance of plenty, and fanned by the breezes of felicity ”

“ Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him—his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition—no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him—neither name nor money to bequeath—a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? ”

“ He waited till it had settled down, then pulled it up and found in it potsherds and bones and broken bottles: whereat he was exceeding wroth and wept and recited the following verses:
Fortune's with God: thou mayst not win to bind or set it free:
Nor letter-lore nor any skill can bring good hap to thee.
Fortune, indeed, and benefits by Fate are lotted out: One
country's blest with fertile fields, whilst others sterile
be.
The shifts of evil chance cast down full many a man of worth And
those, that merit not, uplift to be of high degree. ”

“ I am certain that to achieve what stands achieved to-day, you would willingly have foregone the gain of fifty times that paltry sum. To me it seems that to lose your present fortune were a more serious loss than never to have won it; since surely it is harder to be poor after being rich than never to have tasted wealth at all, and more painful to sink to the level of a subject, being a king, then never to have worn a crown. ”

“ It is often curious to see how little imagination goes into the spending of colossal fortunes. The possessors simply build more houses than they can live in; each one has more space and more impedimenta [Pg 36] than he knows what to do with, and the multiplication of all these possessions results in perpetual anxieties, and fret, and worry, until one would prefer a crust and a garret, and his spiritual freedom, to any such life as that entailed by the golden shower of fortune.
"Are you rich? rich enough to help somebody?" There is the test. ”

“ IT CANNOT be denied, but outward accidents conduce much to fortune; favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue. But chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands. ”

“ Retaining and preserving nothing, they lose the enjoyment of their present prosperity by fancying something better to come; whereas by fortune we may be prevented of this, but that cannot be taken from us. ”

“ Many of you have accumulated or will inherit large fortunes directly or indirectly due to our hard work and sacrifices, you accept the fat of the land as your due and for your own pleasure, without even gratitude to those few that still live who helped to make your fortune. ”

“ Thus it is, that fortune aggrandizes, but adds nothing to the stature.
[Pg 75]
SECT. VI. XVIII. Those, who are under the dominion of ambition and avarice, invert the order and nature of things; placing the end in the means of attaining it. They desire more, only to hoard more, and to have more power, merely for the sake of domineering more. But how does it fare with such people? why that they are always unhappy; because the hunger and thirst of their desires is never appeased, but either remains constantly in the same state, or else proceeds to acquire fresh augmentations. ”