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Daily Inspiration Quote by Douglas William Jerrold

"Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it"

About this Quote

Jerrold’s line skewers a particular kind of self-sabotage: not the person crushed by misfortune, but the person who courts it like an old flame. “So fond of ill luck” lands as a deliberately absurd affection, a comic overstatement that exposes a darker truth: some people treat disaster as familiar, even flattering. If bad things keep happening, at least you get to be the protagonist of them.

The brilliance is in the motion. “Run halfway to meet it” turns luck from a random storm into a scheduled appointment. Jerrold isn’t describing fate; he’s describing appetite. The subtext is less moralistic than diagnostic: certain temperaments seek out what confirms their internal script. Cynicism hunts proof. Anxiety rehearses catastrophe until it feels like preparedness. The chronic complainer builds an identity around being wronged, because grievance is a kind of social currency. Ill luck becomes a story you can tell, a shield against responsibility, a ready-made explanation that keeps you from risking the more frightening alternative: things might go well, and then you’d have to decide what to do with that freedom.

Context matters. Jerrold wrote in a 19th-century Britain where social class, precarious livelihoods, and public performance (the stage, the press, the parlor) made “character” both a survival tool and a mask. As a dramatist, he understood that people lean into roles, even tragic ones, because roles offer structure. The jab is funny because it’s true, and it stings because it suggests ill fortune isn’t always an accident. Sometimes it’s a habit with good timing.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Jerrold, Douglas William. (n.d.). Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/some-people-are-so-fond-of-ill-luck-that-they-run-27737/

Chicago Style
Jerrold, Douglas William. "Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/some-people-are-so-fond-of-ill-luck-that-they-run-27737/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/some-people-are-so-fond-of-ill-luck-that-they-run-27737/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Douglas William Jerrold

Douglas William Jerrold (January 3, 1803 - June 8, 1857) was a Dramatist from England.

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