quotations about fate
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
Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be; and be this so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
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
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
The harder thy fate, the softer thine heart.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
If anyone does not help himself, fate never can help him.
HUANZHANG CHEN
The Economic Principles of Confucius
Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.
FRANK FRANKFORT MOORE
The Original Woman
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.
ELIE WIESEL
The Time of the Uprooted
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
Others will gape t' anticipate
The cabinet designs of fate;
Apply to wizards to foresee
What shall, and what shall never be.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
Fate isn't sentient; it can't make decisions.
RICK CHIANTARETTO
Facade of Shadows
Fate always wins, for our own heart within us
Imperiously furthers its designs.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Wallenstein
Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and mortals--in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and character as well. It is everywhere bound or limitation. But Fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. For who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter? Man is not order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link in a chain, nor any ignominous baggage, but a stupendous antagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the Universe.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Fate is a primitive notion that makes no sense in a land of self-made men and women.
J. PETER EUBEN
"Pure Corruption"
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
How maliciously does fate always lurk in our path!
HEINRICH FRIEDRICH LUDWIG RELLSTAB
The Polish Lancer
Fate is irrevocable, and invincible, and an unchangeable decree; a necessity of all things and actions, according to eternal appointment.
SENECA
Epistles
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
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
Fate is like our guardian angel who watches over us when we tend to stray off of our Divine Path and Purpose. It warns us and gives us a friendly and warm nudge of love to steer us back on track and in the right direction.
MARY BOWERS
Before the Last Teardrop Falls