Fortune
In Hellenistic civilization, the chaotic and unforeseeable turns of chance gave increasing prominence to a previously less notable goddess, Tyche, who embodied the good fortune of a city and all whose lives depended on its security and prosperity, two good qualities of life that appeared to be out of human reach. The Roman image of Fortuna, with the wheel she blindly turned, was retained by Christian writers, revived strongly in the Renaissance and survives in some forms today.
Read more about this topic: Destiny
Famous quotes containing the word fortune:
“The result showed that fortune helps the brave.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men:
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)