Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good actions; try to use ordinary situations.—­Richter.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances, but who have taken them,—­besieged the chance, conquered the chance, and made the chance their servitor.—­Chapin.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries: 
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.—­Voltaire.

There is an hour in each man’s life appointed to make his happiness, if then he seize it.—­Beaumont and Fletcher.

There is no man whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window.—­Cardinal IMPERIALI.

Nothing is so often irrevocably neglected as an opportunity of daily occurrence.—­Marie Ebner-Eschenbach.

Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you.  Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it.—­Haliburton.

That policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance which, like Cromwell’s, can make the iron hot by striking; and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.—­Colton.

Opportunity has hair in front; behind she is bald.  If you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her; but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.—­Seneca.

Opposition.—­The effects of opposition are wonderful.  There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority—­demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice,—­comes graceful and beloved as a bride.  —­Emerson.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill.  Our antagonist is our helper.—­Burke.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man.  Kites rise against and not with the wind.  Even a head wind is better than none.  No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.  Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.—­John Neal.

It is not ease, but effort,—­not facility, but difficulty, that makes men.  There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.—­Samuel smiles.

To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them.—­Goethe.