Intentions often melt in the face of unexpected opportunity.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around, it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you.

That's what this democracy was for us, a huge supermarket of mass man where we could take a piece here and a piece there to make our personalities for ourselves instead of putting up with what was given at the beginning.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

Know thine opportunity.

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.

Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.