quotations about opportunity
Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.
T. JONES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Fools wait for opportunities in order to do everything; able men wait only for such chances as they themselves are unable to create.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
To come before the opportunity, is to come before the bird is hatched; and to come after the opportunity is to come when the bird is flown. There is no calling back time, when it is once past.
JOHN FLAVEL
The Herald of Gospel Liberty, September 22, 1921
To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opportunities are importunities; they are like flowers that fade at night; seize them, therefore, while they last.
G. S. BOWES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Opportunity is one of those things that depend greatly on the eye of the beholder.
ANDREW SANCHEZ
Technical Support Essentials
Opportunity to a statesman is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Opportunity knocks once at every man's door and then keeps on knocking.
GEORGE ADE
"The Undecided Bachelor", Knocking the Neighbors
Bad chances were better than no chances.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
Danger will wink on opportunity.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
To think and to will without doing, when there is opportunity, is like a flame enclosed in a vessel and goes out; also like seed cast upon the sand, which fails to grow, and so perishes with its power of germination.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell
Sometimes, you need a door slammed in your face before you can hear opportunity knock.
JAMES GEARY
Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists
Our abilities and ambitions count for little, unless the door of opportunity is open to us.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
Your opportunity is just as good, perhaps even better, than any other man's. Get to work where you are. And get to work right now.
WILLIAM A. RADFORD
Cement World, April 15, 1908
Many people are waiting for opportunity to knock at the door, but when it does knock they are seldom ready to take advantage of it. No man or woman need wait on opportunity. We all have the innate potential power to create our own opportunities.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Opportunity", Human Life from Many Angles
Oft does the mind wish for lost opportunities.
PETRONIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Although opportunity is more definite than luck, and is apparently governed by more distinguishable laws, it cannot always be corralled and is at times elusive. It is an undeniable fact that equal opportunity does not present itself with apparent fairness; but it is also as positive a fact that opportunity is likely to come to those who seek it, and to avoid those who make no effort to meet it or to prepare themselves to entertain it when it does come.
NATHANIEL CLARK FOWLER
Getting a Start