quotations about fate
Fate's always tricky. She likes to wait till she gets you by the back of the neck, so you can't do a thing, and then passes you all that's coming to you.
RIDGWELL COLLUM
The Law-Breakers
Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
Spin thy plain thread--'tis wanted soon or late;
No friend will seek thee out so sure as Fate.
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Thy Fate Is Seeking Thee"
When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.
ELIE WIESEL
The Time of the Uprooted
If anyone does not help himself, fate never can help him.
HUANZHANG CHEN
The Economic Principles of Confucius
Nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Stellar Moments in Human History
Our fate is something which exists outside ourselves, and which once revealed expresses the meaning of our lives. Apart, however, from soothsayers who claim to have a means of foretelling exactly what will befall us, this kind of fate is only normally revealed after a life has ended. Only then can the meaning of that life be understood.
ANDREW GAMBLE
Politics and Fate
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
Fate loves the fearless.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
Fate remains a confrontation with that which cannot be explained in any other way. It is a part of the very meaning of fate that it is incomprehensible, but this curiously does not mean that all who accept fate are irrational. Whatever is experienced is contingent, and insofar as it is contingent it is not necessary; and not being necessary it is not a product of pure reason. But no one would say that what is contingent is irrational. It might be said to be nonrational, meaning it is not known necessarily; but the term "irrational" is usually reserved for that which directly contradicts itself, like an odd number wholly divisible by two, or a married bachelor. Fate is troubling and perhaps even nonrational, but it is certainly not irrational.
MICHAEL GELVEN
Truth and Existence
Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be; and be this so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill or the furrow.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Submit, then, to fate, always assured that whatever is, is best.
EDU HASSAN
New York Mirror
Fate in the life of a people, as in the life of an individual, signifies an existence of compulsion. A strange necessity binds the particulars into one whole. The individual, against his will, is subjected and subjugated to the national, fate-laden, reality.
JOSEPH DOV SOLOVEITCHIK
Fate and Destiny
Fate is like being dealt a hand of cards with which we must play the game of life.
JOHN A. SANFORD
What Men Are Like
How maliciously does fate always lurk in our path!
HEINRICH FRIEDRICH LUDWIG RELLSTAB
The Polish Lancer
All we can control in life is our own choices, how we choose to live and deal with what life has to offer. Everything else is fate.
MARK PURYEAR
The Nature of Asatru
If you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
That which, to him whose will is not developed, is fate, is, to him who has a well-fashioned will, power.
JOHN CONOLLY
The Westminster Review, Jan. 1865