95 Opportunity Quotes for Seizing the Moment
Opportunities have the power to change everything if you’re ready to seize them, so we’ve gathered all the best opportunity quotes for your next post.
And if you’re looking for inspiring and motivational sayings to embrace new chances, we also have you covered.
Now go ahead and browse through to find your favorite.
Our Favorite Opportunity Quotes
“A closed mouth catches no flies.” — Miguel de Cervantes
“Aim for the stars.” — Unknown
“Aim high in your career but stay humble in your heart.” — Korean (on ambition)
“Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today.” — Unknown
“First come, first served.” — Unknown
“If the eyes didn’t see, the hands wouldn’t take.” — Yiddish (on opportunity)
“Manana (tomorrow) is often the busiest day of the week.” — Unknown
“New day, new fate.” — Bulgarian (on opportunity)
“No time like the present.” — Mary de la Riviere Manley
“Trouble is the only opportunity in work clothes.” — Henry J. Kaiser
“The opportunity that God sends does not wake up him who is asleep.” — Senegalese Proverb
“Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.” — Bulwer-Lytton
“I can believe it, that we each do have / One opportunity, and on it hangs / It may be all.” — Robert Crawford
“A wise man turns chance into good fortune.” — Thomas Fuller
“Once the rice is pudding, it’s too late to reclaim the rice.” — Indonesian (on time and timeliness)
“One who waits for chance, may wait a year.” — Yoruba (West African) (on opportunity)
“Opportunities come but do not linger.” — Nepalese (on opportunity)
“Strike while the iron is hot.” — Chaucer
“When one door shuts, another opens.” — Unknown
“Who waiteth for dead man’s shoes will go long barefoot.” — John Heywood
“Whoever wins the war gets to write the history.” — Unknown
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Thomas A. Edison
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” — Milton Berle
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston S. Churchill
“How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.” — Paulo Coelho
“I will prepare and some day my chance will come.” — Abraham Lincoln
“Our most significant opportunities will be found in times of greatest difficulty.” — S. Monson 1
“Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability…. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.” — Thomas A. Edison
“Sometimes opportunities float right past your nose. Work hard, apply yourself, and be ready. When an opportunity comes you can grab it.” — Julie Andrews Edwards
“No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Time is limited and some opportunities never repeat themselves.” — Belle de Jour
“Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared.” — George S. Clason
“Opportunities will come and go, but if you do nothing about them, so will you.” — Richie Norton
“There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on. The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realized that the test was always about the heart. …The rest is just practice.” — Jaime Buckley
“Opportunity never knocks. It hangs thick in the air all around you. You breathe it unthinking, and dissipate it with your sighs.” — Roy H. Williams
Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along.” — Hugh Allen
“Opportunity is often difficult to recognize; we usually expect it to beckon us with beepers and billboards.” — William Arthur Ward
“Opportunity is a bird that never perches.” — Claude McDonald
“Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending.” — Author Unknown
“All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.” — Sidney Lumet
“Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers.” — Author Unknown
“Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.” — Jerome K. Jerome
“Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.” — Mignon McLaughlin
“Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.” — Brian Tracy
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” — Francois Bacon
“Opportunity – Often it comes in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.” — Napoleon Hill
“Opportunities? They are all around us – there is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.” — Orison Swett Marden
“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” — Demosthenes
“We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” — Author Unknown
“A man who misses his opportunity, and monkey who misses his branch, cannot be saved.” — Hindu Proverb
“Teachers open the doors, but you must enter by yourself.” — Chinese Proverb
“Even when opportunity knocks, a man still has to get up off his seat and open the door.” — Author Unknown
“Opportunity comes like a snail, and once it has passed you it changes into a fleet rabbit and is gone.” — Arthur Brisbane
“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.” — H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“A good opportunity is seldom presented and easily lost.” — Roman Proverb
“Get bait while the tide is out.” — Irish Proverb
“Opportunities neglected are lost.” — German Proverb
“Opportunity never knocks twice in any man’s door.” — Roman Proverb
“Opportunities, like eggs, come one at a time.” — American Proverb
“If the camel once gets its nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” — Arabic Proverb
“The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.” — English Proverb
“When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” — English Proverb
“A person who misses his chance, and the monkey who misses his branch can’t be saved.” — Indian Proverb
“Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.” — Hippocrates
“We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.” — John Dryden
“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” — William Shakespeare
“Never the time and the place / And the loved one altogether.” — Robert Browning
“My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.” — Boris Johnson
“He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay.” — English Proverb
“He is a good time-server that finds out the fittest opportunity of every action.” — Thomas Fuller
“While we stop to think, we often miss out opportunity.” — Publilius Syrus
“The sure way to miss success is to miss the opportunity.” — Philarete Chaskes
“The wise will make more opportunities than they find.” — Sir Francis Bacon
“To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.” — La Rochefoucauld
“Every opportunity presents an obligation.” — John D. Rockefeller Jr.
“Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.” — Disraeli
“To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life.” — Samuel Johnson
“He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.” — William James
“The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment. It is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.” — Orison S. Marden
“There are two kinds of opportunities: one which we chance upon, the other which we create. In times of great difficulty, one must not fail to create his opportunity.” — Takamori Saigo
“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity…Don’t sit down and wait for opportunities to come; you have to get up and make them.” — Madame C.J. Walker
“For the highest task of intelligence is to grasp and recognize genuine opportunity, possibility.” — John Dewey
“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” — Emerson
“Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.” — Samuel Johnson
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” — Sun Tzu
“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, will be fish.” — Ovid
“Take advantage of this human boat; / Free yourself from sorrow’s mighty stream! / This vessel will be later hard to find. / The time that you have now, you fool, / Is not for sleep.” — Shantideva
“Great opportunities come to all, but many do not know they have met them.” — A.E. Dunning
“When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” — Alexander Graham Bell
“Take advantage of every opportunity; where there is none, make it for yourself.” — Marcus Garvey
“How singular, in the vastness of creation, is the richness of our opportunity.” — John Cheever
“What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” — John William Gardner
“Opportunity does not knock; it presents itself when you beat down the door.” — Kyle Chandler
“Opportunities are often things you haven’t noticed the first time around.” — Catherine Deneuve
