John Fowles Quotes

You run risks. That's the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny's whims.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.

It's a kind of Russian roulette.

Nothing is guaranteed.

Some days you're the kid with the stick, some days you're the pinata.

I guess if you live long enough, anything can happen.

Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.

No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.

Who then may trust the dice, at Fortune's throw?

There are no guarantees in life. The simple twists of fate and the breaks of the game are the two maxims that define so much of the success and failure in life.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks.

Success is like winning the sweepstakes or getting killed in an automobile crash. It always happens to somebody else.

There is one word in America that says it all, and that one word is, 'You never know.'

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

Life to me is defined by uncertainty. Uncertainty is the state in which we live, and there is no way to outfox it.

Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.

He that's secure is not safe.