Chance Quotes (page 11)
We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Peter Drucker
At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that...
Gustave Flaubert
Don’t you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there’s a huge possibility you’ll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn’t that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the...
Haruki Murakami
[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.
Terry Eagleton
I shuddered at the mention of Mrs. Stegger."What's that about?" Ranger asked."Mrs. Steeger is the Antichrist."Damn," Ranger said. "I left my Antichrist gun at home."Looks like you brought everything else."Never know when you'll need some tear gas."If we have to gas Mrs. Steeger, it"ll ruin my chances of being Miss Burg in the Mayflower parade.
Janet Evanovich
The whole human earth was bleeding. Time, buildings, routes, rain, erase the constellation of the crime, the fact is, this small planethas been covered a thousand times by blood, war or vengeance, ambush or battle, people fell, they were devoured, and later oblivion wiped cleaneach square meter: sometimesa vague, dishonest monument, other times a clause in bronze, and still later, conversations, births, townships, and then oblivion. What arts we have for exterminationand what science to...
Pablo Neruda
Well, and there is the end of our little drama," I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. "I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective."He gave a most dismal groan.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality, and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road, and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way -- there's a chance, and it's very strange sometimes.
John Lennon
you have quite dampened by spirit and eagerness, and left me exhausted before I could strike a blow. There are two reasons for this: first, your cleverness in treating the subject with such remarkable and consistent moderation as to make it impossible for me to be angry with you; and secondly, the luck or chance or fate by which you say nothing on this important subject that has not been said before.
Martin Luther