Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos;
Tempora si fuerint nubila solus eris.
As long as you are fortunate you will have many friends, but if the times become cloudy you will be alone.
Intera fortunam quisque debet manere suam.
Every man should stay within his own fortune.
I wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend,
For when at worst, they say, things always mend.
Owen—To a Friend in Distress. Cowper's trans.
C'est la fortune de France.
It is the fortune of France.
P hti.tp the Fortunate.
Fortuna humana fingit artatque ut lubet.
Fortune moulds and circumscribes human
affairs as she pleases.
Plautus—Captivi. II. 2. 54.
Nulli est homini perpetuum bonum.
No man has perpetual good fortune.
Actutum fortunae solent mutarier; varia vita est.
Man's fortune is usually changed at once; life is changeable. Plautus—Trucidentus. II. 1. 9.
Fortune had so favoured me in this war that I
feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.
Plutarch quoting Paulus jEmilius.
.9
The wheel goes round and round,
And some are up and some are on the down,
And still the wheel goes round.
Josephine Pollard—Wheel of Fortune.
Fortune in men has some small diff 'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
Who thinks that fortune cannot change her mind,
Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.
And who stands safest? Tell me, is it he
That spreads and swells in puff 'd prosperity,
Or bless'd with little, whose preventing care
In peace provides fit arms against a war?
The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;
yea, I have a goodly heritage.
XVI. 6.
Praesente fortuna pejor est futuri metus.
Fear of the future is worse than one's present
fortune.
QuiNTiLiAN—De Institutione Oratoria. XII.
5.
Nihil est periculosius in hominibus mutata
subito fortuna.
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a
sudden change of fortune.
QxmrmAAH—De Institutions Oratoria. CCLX.
Centre fortune, la diverse un chartier rompit nazardes son fouet.
Agajnst fortune the carter cracks his whip in vain. Rabelais—Pantagruel. Bk. II. Ch. XI.
Chacun est artisan de sa bonne fortune.
Every one is the architect of his own fortune. Regnier—Satire. XIII. Pseudo-Sallust—Ep. de Rep. Ordin. II. 1. Quoting Appius Claudius Cecus, the Censor. Same idea in Plautus—Trinummus. II. 2. 84. Cervantes
Sed profecto Fortuna in omni re dominatur; ea
res cunctas ex lubidine magis, quam ex vero,
celebrat, obscuratque.
But assuredly Fortune rules in all things;
she raises to eminence or buries in oblivion
everything from caprice rather than from wellregulated principle.
Sallust—CatUina. VIII.
Breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt, et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget.
The fashions of human affairs are brief and
changeable, and fortune never remains long
indulgent.
Quuntus Curttus Ruirrs—De Rebus Gestis
Alexandri Magni. IV. 14. 20.
Praecipites regum casus
Fortuna rotat.
Fortune turns on her wheel the fate of kings.
Seneca—Agamemnon. LXXI.
Quidquid in altum, fortuna tulit, ruitura levat.
Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down. Seneca—Agamemnon. C.
Quid non dedit fortuna non eripit.
Fortune cannot take away what she did not give.
Felix, quisquis novit famulum
Rogemque pati,
Vultusque potest variare suos!
Rapuit vires pondusque malis,
Casus animo qui tulit aequo.
Happy the man who can endure the highest and the lowest fortune. He, who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity, has deprived misfortune of its power.
Aurea rumpunt tecta quietem,
Vigilesque trahit purpura noctes.
O si pateant pectora ditum,
Quantos intus sublimis agit
Fortuna metus.
Golden palaces break roan's rest, and purple robes cause watchful nights.
Oh, if the breasts of the rich could be seen into, what terrors high fortune places within!
