quotations about fate
All gamblers are losers.... Because, in the end, if you gamble, you're playing against fate, and fate always wins.
KATY LEDERER
Poker Face
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Natural History of Intellect
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
Fate, or "inevitability", has to do with events in history that are beyond the control of any circle of group of men having three characteristics: (1) compact enough to be identifiable, (2) powerful enough to decide with consequence, and (3) in a position to foresee these consequences and so to be held accountable for them. Events, according to this conception, are the summary and unintended results of innumerable decisions of innumerable men. Each of their decisions is minute in consequence and subject to concellation or reinforcement by other such decisions. There is no link between any one man's intention and the summary result of the innumerable decisions. Events are beyond human decisions: History is made behind men's backs.
CHARLES WRIGHT MILLS
The Sociological Imagination
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
Thy fate is seeking thee,
Fear not! Fear not!
Nor hither, thither run, with puny strain
Of frenzied fingers on this closèd door,
Or that, to find her. Leave thy worse than vain
And feverish seeking; fret thy soul no more,
Nor vex the heavens with ineffectual cries;
Fate will adjust her perfect harmonies
And weave thee in. There is both time and space
For thy one little thread, it shall have place,
Though it be gold, or may be dull of hue,
Or silken smooth--whatever thou hast spun
Be sure in the great woof shall duly run.
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Thy Fate Is Seeking Thee"
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
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
Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.
FRANK FRANKFORT MOORE
The Original Woman
How maliciously does fate always lurk in our path!
HEINRICH FRIEDRICH LUDWIG RELLSTAB
The Polish Lancer
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
Man makes his fate according to his mind:
The weak, low spirit Fortune makes her slave:
But she's a drudge when hector'd by the brave.
If Fate weave common thread, I'll change the doom,
And with new purple weave a nobler loom.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Conquest of Granada
Fate never knocks at the wrong door, dear. You just may not be ready to answer.
SARALEE ROSENBERG
Fate and Ms. Fortune
Great powers may be shaping the general turn of events, but human personalities still determine their own fate.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
What threatens him, therefore, as his fate, is just his own life made by his deed into a stranger and an enemy.
EDWARD CAIRD
Hegel
No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter, Letters to a Young Poet, Apr. 23, 1903
The harder thy fate, the softer thine heart.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Looking backward always presents an overdetermined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time.
REINHARD BENDIX
Force
Fate comes by our own agency. It belongs to our underlying spiritual values, because it is unattainable without experience of the world, and therefore differs from one person to the next.
STELIOS RAMPHOS
Fate and Ambiguity in Oedipus the King
It lies not in our power to love, or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Hero and Leander