"Happy chance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I will fight; but don't flatter yourself about the event. A happy chance alone can help us. Go, in God's name, to Tangermunde [since the Royal Family went, D'Argens and many Berliners are thinking of flight], to Tangermunde, where you will be well; and wait there how Destiny shall have disposed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... desert. Our foe, the Sultan, sent riders after us. At the Court of Kaikobad, King of the Carcasenes, I served as a gardener. His daughter, the Princess Adelma, fell in love with me. I had to flee again, and came to Berlas. There I kept my poor parents by carrying burdens, and by begging. Then a happy chance gave me these fine clothes, a horse, and this purse of gold. I set out in quest of adventure. And here ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... order to declare what feats of arms he had accomplished to entitle him to take that seat. This ceremony being ended, Tristram received the congratulations of all his companions. Sir Launcelot and Guenever took the occasion to speak to him of the fair Isoude, and to express their wish that some happy chance might bring her to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... very quietly one day to him, as he was sitting in the arm-chair of the study, directly facing the doors of the laboratory—the doors that no longer opened. Dr. Laidlaw, by happy chance, was with him at the time, and just able to reach his side in response to the sudden painful efforts for breath; just in time, too, to catch the murmured words that fell from the pallid lips like a message from the other side ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... more we had to consider—a thing at once natural and right in any family, namely, how to hide its wounds from the chattering, scandalous world. And so, when by a happy chance there came over that morning our good friend Lady Oldtower and her carriage full of daughters, Mrs. Halifax communicated, with a simple dignity that quelled all comment, the fact of "my son Edwin's engagement," and accepted the invitation for Maud and Miss Silver, which was willingly repeated ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... manor—much-prized family possessions, sufficient to furnish the whole array of a great ecclesiastical function like this—the lights burning, flowers everywhere, gathered amid the last handfuls of the harvest by the peasant-women, who came to present their children for the happy chance ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Baltimore station he went to mail the letter just as the letter gatherer arrived with his keys to open the box. So the letter lost no time but was sorted and started northward before midnight, and by some happy chance arrived at its destination in time to be laid by Ruth Macdonald's plate at lunch time the ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... soft amusement, an humane delight. To raise th' insipid nature of the ground, Or tame its savage genius to the grace Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems The amiable result of happy chance, Is to create, and give a god-like joy, Which ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... birds of a feather, and rare birds at that. He gives you all the credit of the rescue, and you insist that you had nothing to do with it, but only went along for company, as it were. But I think we all surmised the truth, when you fainted from exhaustion at Miss Martell's feet. That was a very happy chance, and so it all turned out as well as any knight of old ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the trembling town; Press but an entrance, and presume it won. Fear is no more, for fierce Mezentius lies, As the first fruits of war, a sacrifice. Turnus shall fall extended on the plain, And, in this omen, is already slain. Prepar'd in arms, pursue your happy chance; That none unwarn'd may plead his ignorance, And I, at Heav'n's appointed hour, may find Your warlike ensigns waving in the wind. Meantime the rites and fun'ral pomps prepare, Due to your dead companions ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... moonlight. When he was fifteen he went to the neighboring town of Warsaw to school. He had rather heavy weather among the well-knit, grubby-knuckled urchins of the town, and would have been thoroughly disheartened but for one happy chance. At the house where he boarded an amusement called the "Sperrit Rappin's" was much in vogue. A group of young folks, surcharged with all sorts of animal magnetism, with some capacity for belief and much more for fun, used to gather about a light pine table every evening, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Grande, a broad and deep canal, a few miles east of the river. Some distance farther on lies the village of Magenta, the seat of the first great battle of the war. Sixty years before, on those Lombard plains, Napoleon the Great had first lost, and then, by a happy chance, won the famous battle of Marengo. The Napoleon now in command was a very different man from the mighty soldier of the year 1800, and the French escaped a disastrous rout only because the Austrians were led by a still worse general. Some one has said that victory comes to the ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... and companions of death, I cannot but regard it as singularly fortunate that we who by conviction and sympathy are designated by nature as the champions of that fairest of her products, the white metal, should also, by a happy chance, be engaged mostly in the business of mining it. Nothing could be more appropriate than that those who from unselfish motives and elevated sentiments are doing battle for the people's rights and interests, should themselves be the chief beneficiaries of success. Therefore, O children of the earthquake ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... another javelin with his right hand from his left at the same instant; and as he did so I recognised our former enemy, the fetish-man or witch-doctor of Daphne's village. I was by this time within arm's-length of him, and, quick as light, he made a lunge at me. By a happy chance I succeeded in parrying the stroke with the blow-pipe which I held in my left hand, and then, springing in upon him, I dealt him so tremendous a blow with my heavy, knotted, hard-wood club that his skull crashed under it like ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Silver came into the service. That excellent institution, therefore, cannot claim the credit of his selection. Perhaps he was chosen by some shrewd old captain, who knew a fire-horse when he saw one, even in the raw; perhaps it was only a happy chance which put him in the business. At any rate, his training was the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... him, he would not be supported with much zeal by his subjects. This was the condition of things when Volagases ascended the Parthian throne, and found himself in want of a principality with which he might reward the services of Tiridates, his brother. It at once occurred to him that, a happy chance presented him with an excellent opportunity of acquiring Armenia, and he accordingly proceeded, in the very year of his accession, to make an expedition against it. At first he carried all before him. The Iberian supporters of Rhadamistus fled without risking ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... prospect, nor intention, of developing his artistic impulses. He had scarcely, indeed, a suspicion of his own powers—certainly no proper knowledge of their latent possibilities. But commerce had little interest for him, and circumstances which offered an opportunity of escape combining with a happy chance which suggested a higher artistic (and monetary) value for that faculty for drawing which previously he had regarded in the light of a mere hobby, caused him to throw up his earlier plans and devote ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... Naville has stated that possibly the English engineers have helped to prolong the lives of the buildings of Philae, and Monsieur Maspero has declared that "the state of the temple of Philae becomes continually more satisfactory." So be it! Longevity has been, by a happy chance, secured. But what of beauty? What of the beauty of the past, and what of the schemes for the future? Is Philae even to be left as it is, or are the waters of the Nile to be artificially raised still higher, until Philae ceases to be? Soon, no ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... cardinal, delighted at this increase of favour, did not miss his appointment. So, in the morning, he started an horseback for the Vatican; but at a turn of the first street he met the governor of Rome with a detachment of cavalry, who congratulated himself on the happy chance that they were taking the same road, and accompanied him to the threshold of the Vatican. There the cardinal dismounted, and began to ascend the stairs; scarcely, however, had he reached the first landing before his mules and carriages were seized and shut in the palace stables. When ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... leaves sunshine behind, and becomes a part of my inner being. The interval which parts one ecstasy from another is like the short night which marks off our long summer days. The sun which flushed the mountain tops with warmth in setting finds them hardly cold when it rises. What happy chance has given me such a destiny? My mother had roused a host of fears in me; her forecast, which, though free from the alloy of vulgar pettiness, seemed to me redolent of jealousy, has been falsified by the event. Your fears and hers, my own—all have ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... in the title-page of Irish Memories (LONGMANS), since only by a pathetic fiction does it bear the names, as joint authors, of E. OE. SOMERVILLE and "MARTIN ROSS," those two gifted ladies whose association has been such a happy chance for them and for us all. Really the book, though in part compiled from the letters and journals of "MARTIN," is an eloquent tribute by Miss SOMERVILLE to the partner whose death has robbed her of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... his suit must needs have been hopeless, he would have loved her no less, reckless of worldly considerations. As it was, he did not feel that the situation was conventional, but that the fates were kind. His desire, and the right to strive for its attainment, had synchronised by happy chance. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... face of a steep line of hill the Boer riflemen lay hid, and from a short range their fire scourged our exposed flank. The men appear to have been chiefly colonial rebels, and not Boers of the backveld, and to that happy chance it may be that the comparative harmlessness of their fire was due. Even now, in spite of the surprise, the situation might have been saved had the bewildered troops and their harried officers known exactly what to do. It is easy to ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of human desire, then, until reason has compared and experience has tested them, are a miscellaneous assortment of goods, unstable in themselves and incompatible with one another. It is a happy chance if a tolerable mixture of them recommends itself to a prophet or finds an adventitous acceptance among a group of men. Intuitive morality is adequate while it simply enforces those obvious and universal laws which are indispensable to any society, and which impose themselves ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... The happy chance of securing a review of the Tales by the author of "Waverley" himself exceeded Murray's most sanguine expectations, and filled him with joy. He suggested that the reviewer, instead of sending an article on the Gypsies, as he proposed, should introduce whatever ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in 1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for thirty years ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... these treats too common. And she acquired—how should she not?—a power over Mme. Dauvray which was unassailable. The fortune-tellers had no more to say to Mme. Dauvray. She did nothing but felicitate herself upon the happy chance which had sent her Mlle. Celie. And now she lies in her ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... critical one. He had only a few days' supply of provisions; it was impossible to advance, and dangerous to retreat; the Austrians, in superior numbers, were dangerously near him; only fortune and valor could save him from serious disaster. In this crisis of his career happy chance came to his aid, and relieved him from the awkward and perilous situation ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... around, this meeting, it seems," said Richard suavely. "And, by St. Paul! a happy chance indeed. Come, Buckingham, the gross chare grow cold; take place and fall to. . . Catesby, tell the cook to sauce another capon ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... uttered a cry of delight on perceiving the Chevalier de Lorraine. "This is fortunate, indeed," he said; "by what happy chance do I see you? Had you indeed disappeared, as every one ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... happy chance gave me a supply of splendid books. I had Shakespeare, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, translations of Homer and of ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as well she might be. By a happy chance she did not perceive the wisp of steam. She was not looking for steam. People do not expect steam from the interior of a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... disdainful aggressiveness of Whistler's attitude. Besides, in essence, Whistler's lecture was an attack on the academic theory taught in the universities, and defended naturally by a young scholar like Oscar Wilde. Whistler's view that the artist was sporadic, a happy chance, a "sport," in fact, was a new view, and Oscar had not yet reached this level; he reviewed the master in the Pall Mall Gazette, a review remarkable for one of the earliest gleams of that genial humour ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... by some happy chance Had accompanied his brother on his way, Both saw what was the matter at a glance As Dora on the ground unconscious lay; Flora with tears besought them both to stay But they'd arranged that Gilbert home should fly (They lived three-quarters of a mile away) And bring restoratives ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... proper to the genius of the place, and the writer of Casa Guidi Windows had the happiness of seeing her hero, M. le President, "in a cocked hat, and with a train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the boulevards to an occasional yell from the Red." By a happy chance they lighted in Paris upon Tennyson, now Poet-laureate, whom Mrs. Browning had hitherto known only through his poems; he was in the friendliest mood, and urged that they should make use of his house and servants during their stay in England, an offer which was not refused, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... It wears the magic ring, and imagination is but a poor magician compared with it. Madame, do not write to Mademoiselle de Chateaudun. Since you have not done so my letters must necessarily have miscarried. Blessed be the happy chance which prevented you from following my advice! What did I say to you? I was a fool. Be careful not to alarm my darling. The man has lived long enough upon whom she has bestowed her love for one single day. Do not write, it is too late; but admire the decrees of fate. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... actual experience. These belong to the imperfect sleep. But others we do not remember, because they are given to us in that perfect sleep in which the soul is liberated, and goes visiting. Yet sometimes we get a trace of them, by a happy chance, and often their influence remains with us in that spiritual refreshment with which we awake from profound slumber. This is the meaning of that verse in the old psalm: "He giveth to His ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... saw-mill, another, 'longshoreman on the quays. . . . In 1888, seized with despair, he attempted to kill himself. "I was," said he, "as ill as I could be, and I continued to live to sell apples. . . ." He afterward became a gate-keeper and later retailed kvass in the streets. A happy chance brought him to the notice of a lawyer, who interested himself in him, directed his reading and organized his instruction. But his restless disposition drew him back to his wandering life; he traveled over Russia in every direction and ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... he shook hands. "What happy chance inspired you to turn up all ready for riding? We are just off to lunch at Trotbury, and of course you and Miss Sylla will ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came on with an offered hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy chance—he was ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been a part of my system to invite any confidence of ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... confirmation of what her conduct towards me in my new capacity always led me to conjecture, namely, that my guardian star had ordained it so that the real character and principles of my honoured and honourable mate had, by some happy chance, reached the royal ear "before the news of our union. The dear king's graciousness :to M. d'Arblay upon the Terrace, when the commander-in-chief, just then returned from the Continent, was by his side, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay |
