Odds quotes
488 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside odds — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants - packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends - the stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing."
"I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds."
"When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better."
"I like to say, Chop sueys the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another, because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means tsap sui, which, if you translate back, means odds and ends."
"One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?"
"Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it."
"Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more — and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith — that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it."
"America is an unlikely place - a country built on defiance of the odds; on a belief in the impossible. And I remind you of this because as you set out to live your own stories of success and achievement, it's now your turn to help keep it this way."
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can."
"The odds are so stacked against you to have a music career in a place where there's virtually no music industry. So I always attribute it to God."
"Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise."
"Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity."
"I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer for awhile there. I had a good teacher at Interlochen, this arts' academy in Michigan, who taught me the importance of storytelling, and I really responded to that. It seemed like a long shot, but I always play the long odds."
"If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with."
"Society is at odds with itself."
"We are here to laugh at the odds."
"I'll never pay above the odds for something if there's a more cost-effective alternative, so I guess that's where the saver in me shines through."
"Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you’re secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?"
"GLOUCESTER: I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, More than the infant that is born to-night: I thank my God for my humility."
"The odds of not meeting in this life are so great that every meeting is like a miracle. It's a wonder that we don't make love to every single person we meet."
