LUCK

The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
- Letter to Henry H. Rogers, 1/2/1895

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perservance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!
- Mark Twain in Eruption

They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.
- Letter to San Francisco Alta California, printed March 15, 1867

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and -nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stock snuggles into your heart in the same way.
- "The Shrine of St. Wagner"

All people have had ill luck, but Jairus's daughter and Lazarus had the worst.
- Notebook, 1898