"Fortune befriends the bold"
About this Quote
"Fortune befriends the bold" is a tidy piece of worldly advice that lands oddly - and therefore interestingly - in Emily Dickinson's mouth. Dickinson, the great chronicler of interior weather, wasn’t a public striver. She lived small on purpose, turning risk inward: into language, doubt, God, death, and desire. So when she borrows this almost Latin-sounding maxim (it echoes the older "fortune favors the bold"), it reads less like a motivational poster and more like a pressure point.
The intent isn’t to sell swagger. It’s to name a brutal social physics: rewards often go to people willing to act as if they deserve them. "Befriends" is the key verb. Fortune isn’t a neutral vending machine; it’s a fickle relationship, an intimate bias. Dickinson’s word choice makes luck feel like a person with preferences, the kind that returns the gaze of someone unembarrassed by wanting. That carries subtext about who gets to be bold in the first place - and who is punished for it. In a 19th-century context where a woman’s "boldness" could be coded as impropriety, the line has an undertow of irony: yes, boldness attracts opportunity, but boldness is unevenly permitted.
Read through Dickinson’s larger work, the phrase becomes almost a dare she half-believes. Boldness might not mean charging into the world; it might mean refusing its terms. The poem-like compression lets the sentence work two ways at once: a proverb you can repeat, and a sly recognition that luck is social, selective, and susceptible to performance.
The intent isn’t to sell swagger. It’s to name a brutal social physics: rewards often go to people willing to act as if they deserve them. "Befriends" is the key verb. Fortune isn’t a neutral vending machine; it’s a fickle relationship, an intimate bias. Dickinson’s word choice makes luck feel like a person with preferences, the kind that returns the gaze of someone unembarrassed by wanting. That carries subtext about who gets to be bold in the first place - and who is punished for it. In a 19th-century context where a woman’s "boldness" could be coded as impropriety, the line has an undertow of irony: yes, boldness attracts opportunity, but boldness is unevenly permitted.
Read through Dickinson’s larger work, the phrase becomes almost a dare she half-believes. Boldness might not mean charging into the world; it might mean refusing its terms. The poem-like compression lets the sentence work two ways at once: a proverb you can repeat, and a sly recognition that luck is social, selective, and susceptible to performance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Quotes: The Famous and Not so Famous (Terence M. Dorn Ph.D., 2021) modern compilationISBN: 9781662447952 · ID: ptZSEAAAQBAJ
Evidence: ... Fortune befriends the bold . - Emily Dickinson , 1830–1886 , American poet Hope is the thing with feathers — that perches in the soul - and sings the tune without words — and never stops , at all . - Emily Dickinson I dwell in possibility . Other candidates (1) Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson) compilation26.6% for the bonnie souls neighbor and friend and bridegroom spinning upon the shoal |
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