"Care and diligence bring luck"
About this Quote
Care and diligence bring luck distills a hard-earned truth about how good fortune often arrives. Care is the habit of paying attention, preparing thoroughly, and avoiding needless errors. Diligence is sustained effort over time, the daily return to the task when novelty fades. Together they tilt probabilities in your favor. What looks like luck from a distance is frequently the cumulative result of careful groundwork and persistent practice.
Care reduces the downside: you check assumptions, strengthen weak links, and catch small mistakes before they become catastrophes. Diligence increases the upside: repeated attempts widen the field of chance, creating more moments where opportunity can meet readiness. An artisan who maintains tools and measures twice wastes less material and produces more consistent work. A researcher who documents methods, revises hypotheses, and keeps testing is more likely to stumble upon a discovery. Even in social life, reliability is its own magnet. People extend trust and invitations to those who show up prepared and follow through, and those invitations often look like luck.
Thomas Fuller, a 17th-century English clergyman and historian, wrote in an age that balanced faith in providence with a practical ethic of industry. His aphorisms blend moral counsel with worldly shrewdness. The saying does not deny chance; storms and surprises still arrive. It argues that the sphere you can influence is large enough to matter, and that within it, steady attention and effort make fortune more probable. The view anticipates later formulas like opportunity meeting preparation, yet carries a distinctly moral undertone: careful, conscientious work is not only effective but virtuous.
The implication is both sobering and empowering. You cannot command outcomes, but you can shape your exposure to them. Cultivate care to avoid needless losses; cultivate diligence to multiply promising encounters. Over time, what others call luck will look remarkably like the footprint of your habits.
Care reduces the downside: you check assumptions, strengthen weak links, and catch small mistakes before they become catastrophes. Diligence increases the upside: repeated attempts widen the field of chance, creating more moments where opportunity can meet readiness. An artisan who maintains tools and measures twice wastes less material and produces more consistent work. A researcher who documents methods, revises hypotheses, and keeps testing is more likely to stumble upon a discovery. Even in social life, reliability is its own magnet. People extend trust and invitations to those who show up prepared and follow through, and those invitations often look like luck.
Thomas Fuller, a 17th-century English clergyman and historian, wrote in an age that balanced faith in providence with a practical ethic of industry. His aphorisms blend moral counsel with worldly shrewdness. The saying does not deny chance; storms and surprises still arrive. It argues that the sphere you can influence is large enough to matter, and that within it, steady attention and effort make fortune more probable. The view anticipates later formulas like opportunity meeting preparation, yet carries a distinctly moral undertone: careful, conscientious work is not only effective but virtuous.
The implication is both sobering and empowering. You cannot command outcomes, but you can shape your exposure to them. Cultivate care to avoid needless losses; cultivate diligence to multiply promising encounters. Over time, what others call luck will look remarkably like the footprint of your habits.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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