"People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect"
About this Quote
Luck, in Butler's formulation, isn't a cosmic scoreboard; it's a gap analysis. He cuts straight past the sentimental idea that fortune is about what happens to you and lands on the more volatile truth: the story you were promised matters as much as the outcome you receive. "Lucky and unlucky" become psychological verdicts, not objective conditions, issued by the mind as it compares reality to an internal contract.
The key move is that word "ratio". It smuggles in a quietly modern, almost economic view of emotion: satisfaction scales with expectation. A modest win can feel like triumph if you were braced for disaster; a genuine windfall can register as loss if you were coached to anticipate more. Butler isn't flattering our sense of fairness. He's indicting the machinery that manufactures disappointment: parents, priests, politicians, advertisers, romantic mythologies - anyone with an incentive to inflate what life "should" deliver.
As a Victorian-era poet and satirist adjacent to the period's moral certainties and progress rhetoric, Butler is also taking aim at the era's confidence that history bends neatly upward. When societies market advancement as inevitable, they raise the baseline of entitlement. The result is a culture where grievance can flourish amid abundance, and where "unlucky" becomes a feeling available even to the privileged.
The subtext is sharper still: controlling expectations is a form of power. If luck is relative, then whoever shapes the promise shapes the verdict. Butler's line reads like a warning label for modern life, where the loudest voices aren't just selling products; they're selling futures.
The key move is that word "ratio". It smuggles in a quietly modern, almost economic view of emotion: satisfaction scales with expectation. A modest win can feel like triumph if you were braced for disaster; a genuine windfall can register as loss if you were coached to anticipate more. Butler isn't flattering our sense of fairness. He's indicting the machinery that manufactures disappointment: parents, priests, politicians, advertisers, romantic mythologies - anyone with an incentive to inflate what life "should" deliver.
As a Victorian-era poet and satirist adjacent to the period's moral certainties and progress rhetoric, Butler is also taking aim at the era's confidence that history bends neatly upward. When societies market advancement as inevitable, they raise the baseline of entitlement. The result is a culture where grievance can flourish amid abundance, and where "unlucky" becomes a feeling available even to the privileged.
The subtext is sharper still: controlling expectations is a form of power. If luck is relative, then whoever shapes the promise shapes the verdict. Butler's line reads like a warning label for modern life, where the loudest voices aren't just selling products; they're selling futures.
Quote Details
| Topic | Happiness |
|---|
More Quotes by Samuel
Add to List
