Luck
Luck or chance is fortune (whether bad or good) which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense. In the prescriptive sense, luck is a supernatural and deterministic concept that there are forces (e.g. gods or spirits) which prescribe that certain events occur very much the way laws of physics will prescribe that certain events occur. It is the prescriptive sense that people mean when they say they "do not believe in luck". In the descriptive sense, luck is a word people give after the occurrence of events which they find to be fortuitous or unfortuitous, and maybe improbable.
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Famous quotes containing the word luck:
“... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the smallest possible use; yet for whose sake I have suffered the discomfort attending all action in moral improvements, without the happiness of knowing that this was clearly quite worth while.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Well gentlemen, this is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for. Tonight your target is Tokyo. And you’re gonna play ‘em the Star Spangled Banner with two-ton bombs. All you’ve got to do is to remember what you’ve learned and follow your squadron leaders. They’ll get you in, and they’ll get you out. Any questions? All right that’s all. Good luck to you. Give ‘em hell.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)