Opportunity Knocking

Sunday, January 4, 2015 – Opportunity Knocking

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one. ~ Mark Twain

This American system of ours – call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like – gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it. ~ Al Capone

Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand, and when there is an opportunity, I do not hit – it hits all by itself. ~ Bruce Lee

There is a nick in Fortune’s restless wheel for each man’s good. ~ George Chapman, Bussy d’Ambois

Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once passed by, is bald behind. ~ Abraham Cowley, Pyramus and Thisbe (XV)

Let nothing pass which will advantage you; Hairy in front, Occasion’s bald behind. [Rem tibi quam nosces aptam dimittere noli; Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva.] ~ Dionysius Cato, Disticha de Moribus (II)

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Even a blind dog can find a bone every so often. ~ Alexi Sayle

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations. ~ Jean Paul Richter

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. ~ Milton Berle

Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o’clock. ~ Woody Allen, “My Speech to the Graduates,” Side Effects, 1980

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it. ~ Danny Kaye

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it. ~ Jonathan Winters

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year. ~ Voltaire

Those who cannot miss an opportunity of saying a good thing are not to be trusted with the management of any great question. ~ William Hazlitt

Opportunity makes a thief. ~ Sir Francis Bacon

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity. ~ Helen Rowland

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead. ~ Oscar Wilde

My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t hit John Denver in the mouth while I had the chance. ~ Denis Leary

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ~ Thomas A. Edison

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity. ~ Cesar Chavez

Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door. ~ Kyle Chandler

Perhaps one of the only positive pieces of advice that I was ever given was that supplied by an old courtier who observed: Only two rules really count. Never miss an opportunity to relieve yourself; never miss a chance to sit down and rest your feet. ~ Edward VIII

Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it’s too late. ~ Rita Coolidge

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ~ Boris Pasternak

I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity to learn anything except how to fight. ~ Pancho Villa

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: ‘Only if I did not know that I was doing so.’ To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean = even if it did build muscle – whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one’s learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period… the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. ~ Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

Instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover, life gives us something that we could hardly imagine. ~ Marcel Proust

During their lifetimes, every man and woman will stumble across a great opportunity. Sadly, most of them will simply pick themselves up, dust themselves down and carry on as if nothing ever happened. ~ Winston Churchill

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen. ~ Sidney Lumet