Failure is the path of least diligence

You are supposed to add "...in bed" to the end of every fortune.

It is a good thing that I'm not a landlord chasing people for rent payments.  Apparently, these days that is the path to failure. (wah wah wah)

Ziggy figured this one out 15 years ago.

There is the  possibility that this fortune is supposed to say what it says and imply that you will fail if you are always renting a property, I will go out on a limb here and guess that the author of the above fortune meant to write, "Failure is the path of least persistence."  This fortune was intended to be a play on the old cliche based on the scientific phenomenon of the path of least resistance. The clever play on words was actually used correctly in a Ziggy comic in 1996. 

"The path of least resistance" is an idiom for "the easiest way." According to answers.com, it is the "physical or metaphorical pathway that provides the least resistance to forward motion by a given object or entity, among a set of alternative paths."

As H.G. Wells said, “The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.” One can also deduce that if you are not persistent, you are also going to fail. Bravo to the person who came up with this clever variation on the theme (I don't think it was the fortune cookie company), but a big fat "F" (for failure) to the person who didn't check the final copy.

You can run your copy through the spell checker a million times, but there is no replacement for the human eye.  Not even a grammar checker can do a fool-proof job at making sure you are getting your message across correctly.  Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do your due diligence and read through everything that goes out the door.  At the end of the day, you'll be glad you did.