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Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.
ANATOLE FRANCE, The Garden of Epicurus
It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.
THOMAS HARDY, Far from the Madding Crowd
- Yet they, believe me, who await
- No gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate.
MATTHEW ARNOLD, Resignation
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.
HORACE WALPOLE, letter, Jan. 19, 1777
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