This world is but a lottery of goods, of ranks, of dignities, of rights. [ Voltaire ]

Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty, and women their happiness. [ Mme. de Rieux ]

A coquette is a woman who places her honor in a lottery: ninety-nine chances to one that she will lose it.

He who trusts all things to chance makes a lottery of his life. He who wants content cannot find an easy chair. [ Proverb ]

A man who cannot win fame in his own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True, there are some half-dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of commonsense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery? [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]