I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.
A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility,-- Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.
From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
Nothing so difficult as a beginning / In poesy, except perhaps the end; / For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning / The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, / Like Lucifer, when hurl'd from heaven for sinning.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
The difference in winning & losing is most often, not quitting.
Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation.
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures, Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures. War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying. If all the world be worth the winning, Think, oh think it worth enjoying: Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee.
Travelling is like gambling; it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.
A man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good-will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow men.
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.--_George Eliot._
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 common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed
In too many marriage conflicts, we work too hard at winning the argument and too little at winning the heart.
What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.
If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.
"Free markets select for winning solutions."
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal!' -- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a faster rat!!
What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. -- WOP, "War Games"
-- Vince Lombardi
It has been said that Public Relations is the art of winning friends and getting people under the influence. -- Jeremy Tunstall
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center. -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. -- Hunter S. Thompson
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and decides to do something about it. He calls up his best friend, who is a mathematical genius. "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track? We could make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life." The mathematician thinks this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself. A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any success. The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes, actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but there a number of details to be figured out. After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house, looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right track." At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by pounding on his door at three in the morning. He has dark circles under his eyes. His hair hasn't been combed for many days. He appears to be wearing the same clothes as the last time. He has several pencils sticking out from behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face. "WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!! And it's so EASY! First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple harmonic motion..."
Most people's favorite way to end a game is by winning.
The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim, 'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh. -- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
How do you insult a lawyer? You might as well not even try. Consider: of all the highly trained and educated professions, law is the only one in which the prime lesson is that *winning* is more important than *truth*. Once someone has sunk to that level, what worse can you say about them?
A gambler's biggest thrill is winning a bet. His next biggest thrill is losing a bet.
"Free markets select for winning solutions." -- Eric S. Raymond
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent with Basil. -- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question: If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning</p> photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use? -- Paul Harvey
The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career. -- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
"Well, then, listen. You must know I felt so interested in the splendid roan horse, with his elegant little rider, so tastefully dressed in a pink satin jacket and cap, that I could not help praying for their success with as much earnestness as though the half of my fortune were at stake; and when I saw them outstrip all the others, and come to the winning-post in such gallant style, I actually clapped my hands with joy. Imagine my surprise, when, upon returning home, the first object I met on the staircase was the identical jockey in the pink jacket! I concluded that, by some singular chance, the owner of the winning horse must live in the same hotel as myself; but, as I entered my apartments, I beheld the very gold cup awarded as a prize to the unknown horse and rider. Inside the cup was a small piece of paper, on which were written these words--'From Lord Ruthven to Countess G----.'"
This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand. By great good fortune the wiser among us have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at present played. We call them "Laws of Nature," and honour them because we find that if we obey them we win something for our pains. The cards are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental verifications. But what sane man would endeavour to solve this problem: given the rules of a game and the winnings, to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or gold-leaf? Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my mind no saner.
Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished, maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:
For it is of no avail to say it is uncertain that we gain, and certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance between the certainty of that which is staked and the uncertainty of what we shall gain, equals the finite good which is certainly staked against an uncertain infinite. This is not so. Every gambler stakes a certainty to gain an uncertainty, and yet he stakes a finite certainty against a finite uncertainty without acting unreasonably. It is false to say there is infinite distance between the certain stake and the uncertain gain. There is in truth an infinity between the certainty of gain and the certainty of loss. But the uncertainty of gain is proportioned to the certainty of the stake, according to the proportion of chances of gain and loss, and if therefore there are as many chances on one side as on the other, the game is even. And thus the certainty of the venture is equal to the uncertainty of the winnings, so far is it from the truth that there is infinite distance between them. So that our argument is of infinite force, if we stake the finite in a game where there are equal chances of gain and loss, and the infinite is the winnings. This is demonstrable, and if men are capable of any truths, this is one.
At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book, that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides. Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.
"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.
There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Ropewalk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened.
As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered pan-talettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction; he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done.
"Was not the winning horse entered by the name of Vampa?"
The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.
"Don't interrupt, we are not such fools as you think, Mr. Lawyer," cried Lebedeff's nephew angrily. "Of course there is a difference between a hundred roubles and two hundred and fifty, but in this case the principle is the main point, and that a hundred and fifty roubles are missing is only a side issue. The point to be emphasized is that Burdovsky will not accept your highness's charity; he flings it back in your face, and it scarcely matters if there are a hundred roubles or two hundred and fifty. Burdovsky has refused ten thousand roubles; you heard him. He would not have returned even a hundred roubles if he was dishonest! The hundred and fifty roubles were paid to Tchebaroff for his travelling expenses. You may jeer at our stupidity and at our inexperience in business matters; you have done all you could already to make us look ridiculous; but do not dare to call us dishonest. The four of us will club together every day to repay the hundred and fifty roubles to the prince, if we have to pay it in instalments of a rouble at a time, but we will repay it, with interest. Burdovsky is poor, he has no millions. After his journey to see the prince Tchebaroff sent in his bill. We counted on winning... Who would not have done the same in such a case?"
"The name of the owner of the winning horse?"
So saying, he penetrated deep again The abode of Pluto; but I still unmoved There stood expecting, curious, other shades To see of Heroes in old time deceased. And now, more ancient worthies still, and whom I wish'd, I had beheld, Pirithoüs And Theseus, glorious progeny of Gods, But nations, first, numberless of the dead Came shrieking hideous; me pale horror seized, Lest awful Proserpine should thither send The Gorgon-head from Ades, sight abhorr'd! I, therefore, hasting to the vessel, bade My crew embark, and cast the hawsers loose. They, quick embarking, on the benches sat. Down the Oceanus the current bore My galley, winning, at the first, her way With oars, then, wafted by propitious gales.
4:2. When it is present, they imitate it: and they desire it, when it hath withdrawn itself, and it triumpheth crowned for ever, winning the reward of undefiled conflicts.
There was never any lack of the scientific imagination about the great anatomist; and the charge of indifference to general ideas, sometimes brought against him, is stupidly unjust. But Cuvier was one of those happily endowed persons in whom genius never parts company with common-sense; and whose perception of the importance of sound method is so great that they look at even a truth, hit upon by those who pursue an essentially vicious method, with the sort of feeling with which an honest trader regards the winnings of a gambler. They hold it better to remain poor than obtain riches by the road that, as a rule, leads to ruin.