quotations about opportunity
Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.
T. JONES
attributed, Day's Collacon
We must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot.
RICHARD SHARP
Letters and Essays in Prose and Verse
Let today be the day ... you stop letting your history interfere with your destiny and awaken to the opportunity to release your greatest self.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life, the Truth, and Being Free
There is a glass called opportunity
All pregnant with bright prophecies, if man
But read at the propitious moment.
But--let the fecund second slip and lo!
The globule tumbles from his coward's hands
Splintering a rain of lost forevers
Upon the sunless stretches of the world.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
Opportunities are a tricky crop, with tiny flowers that are difficult to see and even more difficult to harvest.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Equality of opportunity is the essence of social justice.
A. M. HONORÉ
"Social Justice"
We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.
THOMAS EDISON
attributed, Famous Quotes from 100 Great People
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS
Studies in Nature and Literature
O Opportunity! thy guilt is great:
'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason!
Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season;
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
We must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Julius Caesar
Fools wait for opportunities in order to do everything; able men wait only for such chances as they themselves are unable to create.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opportunity is as constant as the shadows that walk with us, and is always present in our affairs.
DOC SCHMIDT
The International Stereotypers and Electrotypers Union Journal, April 1921
Opportunity possessing the power over all things, acquires much in its course.
SOPHOCLES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opportunity to a statesman is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every man knows that there are moments upon which hang the destiny of years. It is only for the moment that the favorable opportunity is presented. If we miss it, months, months and years are lost. What is the doing of a deed but the sowing of a seed? If it is not sown at the right time, it will not germinate. How priceless are the sunny days of youth, so rich in opportunity. Is it not always the nick of time for an active-minded youth? His brain cells and nerves are plastic, and it is easy to make an impression upon the mind itself, by which life's activities may be so regulated that his success will be as certain as the processes of mechanism. The determining moment is often very brief, and if we are on the watch, and always ready to seize it, it will make all the difference to us between success and failure.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Hour of Opportunity
To think and to will without doing, when there is opportunity, is like a flame enclosed in a vessel and goes out; also like seed cast upon the sand, which fails to grow, and so perishes with its power of germination.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell
Bad chances were better than no chances.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Day's Collacon