Chance

Works to read

• Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1380s · Great Books
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513 (published 1532) · Great Books
• A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, 1916-1917 (English 1920) · Great Books
• The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives by Plutarch, c. 100 CE
• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, c. 1349-1353
• Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe, c. 1592 (printed 1594)
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, 1881
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, 1891
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, 1927

Passages

• he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die.

  — Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays

• Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

• About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady

  — Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: chance, fortune, luck, accident. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.