Lucky Unlucky Quotes & Sayings

Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner, and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through the newspaper determined to find certain job advertisements and, as a result, miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there, rather than just what they are looking for. — Richard Wiseman

Why are you Ojo the Unlucky?" asked the tin man. "Because I was born on a Friday." "Friday is not unlucky," declared the Emperor. "It's just one of seven days. Do you suppose all the world becomes unlucky one-seventh of the time?" "It was the thirteenth day of the month," said Ojo. "Thirteen! Ah, that is indeed a lucky number," replied the Tin Woodman. "All my good luck seems to happen on the thirteenth. I suppose most people never notice the good luck that comes to them with the number 13, and yet if the least bit of bad luck falls on that day, they blame it to the number, and not to the proper cause. — L. Frank Baum

Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful! — Viktor E. Frankl

Most criminals were dumb, and he took the view that the whole science of criminology was essentially flawed, since much of its theory was based on the study of criminals who had been caught, and were therefore either stupid or unlucky, as opposed to the study of those who had not been caught, and were therefore smart and had a little luck on their side, but just a little. Luck ran out, but smart was for life. — John Connolly

The possibility of incorrect results in the presence of unlucky timing is so important in concurrent programming that it has a name: a race condition. A race condition occurs when the correctness of a computation depends on the relative timing or interleaving of multiple threads by the runtime; in other words, when getting the right answer relies on lucky timing. — Brian Goetz

It is our custom to say that someone is 'lucky' or 'unlucky' if they meet with fortunate or unfortunate circumstances, respectively. It is, however, too simplistic to think in terms of random 'luck.' Even from a scientific point of view, this is not a sufficient explanation. — Dalai Lama

Months later, Michaela's mother would spread a star chart before us and explain to me that the slowing had shifted everyone's astrological signs. Fortunes had changed. Personalities had rearranged. The unlucky had turned lucky. The lucky had turned less so. Our fates, so long ago written in the stars, had been rewritten in a day. — Karen Thompson Walker

I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees ... The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life? — Richard Russo

If you ask people (as I often do) how they make decisions, 'lucky' people will talk about tuning in to information and instincts, while 'unlucky' people often mention pushing away the uncomfortable feeling they were headed for trouble. — Martha Beck

Am I OK? I'm lots of things. I'm lonely, I'm tired, I'm sad, I'm happy, I'm lucky, I'm unlucky; I'm a million different things every day of the week. But I suppose OK is one of them. — Cecelia Ahern

He was like an extrovert who wanted to be an introvert, a very social guy who wanted to be a loner, a lucky person who would have preferred to be unlucky. An optimist posing as a pessimist, hoping people will take heed. It wasn't until the Iraq War and the end of his life that he became sincerely gloomy. — Kurt Vonnegut

Do you think Friday unlucky?

No, I think Friday lucky, All Christian people, whatever their lighter superstitions, have always thought Friday lucky. Otherwise they would have talked about Bad Friday instead of Good Friday. — G.K. Chesterton

Either I'm ridiculously lucky or ridiculously unlucky, I just don't know which one. — Maija Haavisto

A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its independent value. — Walter Pater

The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future - that if they're lucky, they'll manage to avoid welfare; and if they're unlucky, they'll die of a heroin — J.D. Vance

Unlucky people are stuck in routines. When they see something new, they want no part of it. Lucky people always want something new. They're prepared to take risks and relaxed enough to see the opportunities in the first place. — Richard Wiseman

Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross. — Julian Barnes

When I asked Richard Branson if he felt luck played a part in his success, he answered, "Yes, of course, we are all lucky. If you live in a free society, you are lucky. Luck surrounds us every day; we are constantly having lucky things happen to us, whether you recognize it or not. I have not been any more lucky or unlucky than anyone else. The difference is when luck came my way, I took advantage of it." Ah, spoken like a man knighted with wisdom. While we're on the topic, it's my belief that the old adage we often hear - "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation" - isn't enough. I believe there are two other critical components to "luck. — Darren Hardy

Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose. — R.H. Blyth

I was born with a bad pancreas, and I could have been born with something a lot worse. I wasn't particularly lucky, but I wasn't particularly unlucky, either. — Kathryn Ormsbee

People would be a lot more skeptical if they understood that there is an incredible amount of chance in the results that you observe for active managers. The distribution of outcomes is enormously wide-but that's exactly what you'd expect by chance with lots of active managers who hold imperfectly diversified portfolios. The really good portfolios contain a lot of really lucky picks, and the really bad portfolios contain a lot of really unlucky picks as well as some really bad ones. — Eugene Fama

Believing there's no such thing as luck is very unlucky. Like, the worst. Beyond stealing someone's lucky four-leaf clover. — Caprice Crane

The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We must often visit yesterday to see how lucky or unlucky we are today! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There will always be the lucky well and the unlucky sick, but the division should never be determined by privilege - intellectual or otherwise. Among — Wayne Biddle

To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake. — Amartya Sen

I love fortune readings! because when I get in troubles, if the reading says that I am in a lucky day, I can think my troubles are just some kind of mistakes, and if the reading says that I am in the unlucky day, I can think that my troubles are just because of my bad luck. Either ways, I can know the reason of my troubles. — Hiroko Sakai

In adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything that excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically. — Christopher Hitchens

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The most unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives.
You can't blame these kids for not being thankful or satisfied with what they have. Their mentality eludes them from the reality. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

God does not deem you to be lucky or unlucky ... you're mindset does. — Robert Kiyosaki

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me. — Mary Ruefle

Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't. — N.K. Jemisin

You can't choose the person who really sees you - the person who knows what you're feeling without you saying a word, the person who can make you laugh and cry and everything in between just by looking at you. The one you can't imagine being lucky enough to have, or unlucky enough to lose. — Kami Garcia

Busy in a bus or lacking luck you poke to pluck a pick-up truck.
Utterly shocked you choke in the lock and check if you chuck a buck or if you are stuck in the muck.
So you should lurk in a day like this in such a murky lucky way.
In a day when you don't know if you laugh or cry...
Errands wait for those who are late in the busiest day.
Such day that defies all your senses and makes you want to fly...
To fly away! — Ana Claudia Antunes

If lucky be not proud; if unlucky, do not despond. — Decimius Magnus Ausonius

An unlucky rich man is more capable of satisfying his desires and of riding out disaster when it strikes, but a lucky man is better off than him ... He is the one who deserves to be described as happy. But until he is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate. — Solon

A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. "Right," "wrong," "success," "failure," "lucky," "unlucky," may be as limiting a way of seeing things as "diabetic," "epileptic," "manic-depressive," or even "invalid." Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself. — Rachel Naomi Remen

No one touched the bottom of the lake and lived. If you were lucky, you'd surface wide-eyed and frantic, babbling at the darkness, the thickness of what lay below. If you were unlucky, underwater recovery dragged the lake for your body. — Karen Katchur

Lucky in work, unlucky in love. — Margaret Drabble

I'm not unlucky at love, just incredibly lucky with celibacy. — Tim Heaton

Sometimes, you don't get what you want the most ... At other times, you're just lucky. — Sanhita Baruah

I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake. — Maeve Binchy

The human mind has a tendency to observe unsystematic events and assign a pattern to the results. A habitual risk-taker reorganizes the stream of random events and retrospectively attributes the outcome of indiscriminate trials to their own gambling "strategies." We often hear people say that they are lucky or unlucky, when in actuality they can claim no ownership in the occurrence of chaotic outcomes. A false sense of the existence of luck can cause people to discount the value of their actual effort, skill, and training. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do. — John Connolly

TV tends to be like, if you're lucky, it's like Las Vegas. You can't get out. There's always another pitch meeting. They keep you on the casino floor. If I'm unlucky, if I'm lucky enough to be unlucky, I would love to write a movie. — Dan Harmon

Back when I was a kid, we had a saying, 'Unlucky at love, lucky at grand theft auto,'" Charley said. — Fred Willard

Every one and every single time is different, and I didn't have C-sections, which I don't know if that's lucky or unlucky, but I was able to feel every contraction. You forget what it feels like. God's got a great way of making women forget what it's like because we would never go through it again. — Monica Potter

Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky. — Lee Trevino

No one is born just once. If you're lucky, you'll emerge again in someone's arms; or unlucky, wake when the long tail of terror brushes the inside of your skull. — Anne Michaels

Then who is it?" said Arthur. "Well," said Ford, "if we're lucky it's just the Vogons come to throw us in to space." "And if we're unlucky?" "If we're unlucky," said Ford grimly, "the captain might be serious in his threat that he's going to read us some of his poetry first ... . — Douglas Adams

I can pinpoint the session that brought me back to the world. That session cost $75. $75 is two weeks of groceries. It's a month of bus fare. It's not even a school years worth of new shoes. It took weeks of $75 to get to the one saved my life. We both had parents that believed us when we said we weren't OK, but mine could afford to do something about it. I wonder how many kids like Joey wanted to die and were unlucky enough to actually pull it off. How many of those kids have someone who cared about them but also had to pay rent? I'm so lucky that right now i'm not describing Joey's funeral. — Neil Hilborn

Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect. — Samuel Butler

Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism.
Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse. — Sam Harris

I consider everything that happened to be precious moments of my life.
The pain.
The suffering.
The fun ...
And I am here right now, because everyone was there for me.
I couldn't have accomplished anything by standing still, without anybody's help.
I treasure every moment I have spent here.
Unlucky?
I feel pretty lucky.
This is my resolve.
-Sawada Tsunayoshi- — Sawada Tsunayoshi

Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it. — M.L. Stedman

He's so unlucky it's almost lucky," Gren said. "It's like he has reverse luck."
"He's reverse good-looking, too" said Hyde.
"I'm going to reverse punch you," Strag said to his brother.
"That was reverse smart, man. It means you're going to punch yourself. — Veronica Rossi

What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious. — Italo Calvino

It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all. — Ayn Rand

It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people. — Voltaire

I've been lucky enough - well, maybe unlucky enough - to have had a lot of friends who have had their ups and downs. And for an actor, that's good. Life experience in any regard is good. So I've seen a lot and I've had my own experiences. — Chris Evans

Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents. — Patti Smith

How unlucky I am that this should happen to me. But not at all. Perhaps, say how lucky I am that I am not broken by what has happened, and I am not afraid of what is about to happen. For the same blow might have stricken anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation and complaint. — Marcus Aurelius

All artists have runners, people that tell them what to do, business managers, lawyers, these - if they get the right ones, they're lucky, and if they get the wrong ones, they're unlucky. — Berry Gordy

Kind of," I said, "still, think about this. Everyone's built the same. It's like we're all riding together on a broken airplane. Of course there are lucky people, there are also unlucky people. There're tough people, and weak people, rich people, and poor people. However, not a single person's broken the mold with his toughness. We're all the same. Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll want to get stronger. Even if you're just pretending. Don't you think? — Haruki Murakami