«We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.»

«At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath»

«Someone receives a promotion, gets an important assignment, makes a major discovery, or moves into the president's office. ''He's lucky',' an envious person remarks. ''He gets the breaks; they're always in his favor'.' In reality, luck or the breaks of life had little or nothing to do with it. So-called ''luck'' usually is found at the exact point where preparation meets opportunity. For a time, an individual may get ahead by ''pull',' but eventually someone with push will displace him. Success is not due to a fortuitous concourse of stars at our birth, but to a steady trail of sparks from the grindstone of hard work each day.»

«That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy»

«PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.»

«PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.He lived in a period prehistoric, When all was absurd and phantasmagoric. Born later, when Clio, celestial recorded, Set down great events in succession and order, He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous In anything here but the lies that she threw at us. --Orpheus Bowen»

«PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.»

«The plague today...is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.»

«The age being now past of vagrant excursion and fortuitous hostility, he was under the necessity of travelling from court to court, scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, an idle promiser of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part of the world y»