The popular slogan that privileges courage on the verge of foolhardiness, “Fortune favours the bold,” is a translation of the Latin proverb attributed by Pliny the Younger to his uncle, Pliny the Elder—see previously here and here and perhaps paraphrasing from a verse in Virgil’s Aeneid deifying Fortune as grace and luck and appreciating bravery—on the occasion of dispatching his fleet for a rescue and recovery mission to Mount Vesuvius (previously here, here, here and here) to search for friend, senator Pomponianus, who was in Stabiae just south of Pompeii, also to satisfy his own scientific curiosity. 
The rescue party crossed the Bay of Naples amidst the unfolding disaster, waiting overnight for the winds to change so they could depart. The prevailing winds never shifted to their favour, standing them and left to face either sheltering in the senator’s villa, knowing the roof would collapse eventually under the weight of the accumulated ash and pumice or try to escape overland and risk being poisoned by toxic gases from the eruption. Variations include Louis Pasteur’s reformulation Fortuna Eruditis Favet (Fortune favours the prepared mind) and Machiavelli’s dictum that it is better to be adventurous rather than cautious—extending the metaphor with, “because Fortune is a woman, it is necessary to beat her into submission and thus ill-used allows herself to be mastered by the daring.” It is the motto of several military units worldwide and a leitmotif in Star Trek canon.
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