quotations about fate
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
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"
Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
In the beginning, there were three goddesses, the Fates: one to spin the thread of life, one to measure it, one to cut it. Not only mortals, but even the gods were subject to the decrees of Fate. But the ancient Greeks had a saying that the Muses--and only the Muses--can change the weave of Fate. This is a remarkable psychological idea, and a redemptive one--for it suggests that one is never trapped by one's fate, never permanently imprisoned in the pain of one's childhood, never completely bound by the limitations of one's present circumstance. But it is important to note that what brings redemption and freedom from the heavy hand of Fate is not the frenetic activity of data-gathering, and not a heroic egotistic attitude that tries to break down all barriers, all limitations, trampling over one's history in the determination to dictate all the terms of one's life. No: what brings real change, real redemption from entrapment in the deadening sense of fatalism that stops all creativity, are the Muses. These beautiful daughters of Mnemosyne are able to take the most horrific and anguished experiences of our lives and work their artistry upon them. The Muses enable us to make poetry from pain, lyric from loneliness, literature from personal tragedy. This is what releases us from the sense of meaninglessness that keeps us stuck in pain.
MARY LYNN KITTELSON
The Soul of Popular Culture
Submit, then, to fate, always assured that whatever is, is best.
EDU HASSAN
New York Mirror
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.
ELIE WIESEL
The Time of the Uprooted
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
Fate loves the fearless.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
If anyone does not help himself, fate never can help him.
HUANZHANG CHEN
The Economic Principles of Confucius
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 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, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be; and be this so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
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 is like being dealt a hand of cards with which we must play the game of life.
JOHN A. SANFORD
What Men Are Like
All gamblers are losers.... Because, in the end, if you gamble, you're playing against fate, and fate always wins.
KATY LEDERER
Poker Face
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
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
When fate is adverse, a blade of grass may become equal to a thunderbolt, and when fate is favorable, a thunderbolt may be like a tuft of grass.
CHEEVER MACKENZIE BROWN
The Triumph of the Goddess
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
How maliciously does fate always lurk in our path!
HEINRICH FRIEDRICH LUDWIG RELLSTAB
The Polish Lancer