quotations about fate
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
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The Triumph of the Goddess
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"
Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.
FRANK FRANKFORT MOORE
The Original Woman
Fate never knocks at the wrong door, dear. You just may not be ready to answer.
SARALEE ROSENBERG
Fate and Ms. Fortune
Fate isn't sentient; it can't make decisions.
RICK CHIANTARETTO
Facade of Shadows
Fate isn't black or white, right or left. People aren't just plopped down and made to follow one route in life on the whims of the gods. If that were true, we'd have to say Hitler was only a victim of his own destiny, and therefore blameless ... We have decisions to make, actions to take, good ones and bad ones that make up the texture of our lives. Everything we do or don't do matters ... Everything counts at the end of the day ... we have a pattern to make. We have to see it through, try to find a way to complete it.
NORA ROBERTS
Three Fates
The youth should be taught that he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate; that diligence is the mother of good luck; that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be; and be this so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
I presume that it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
A Princess of Mars
All gamblers are losers.... Because, in the end, if you gamble, you're playing against fate, and fate always wins.
KATY LEDERER
Poker Face
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
Dread discovers fate, but when the individual would put his confidence in fate, dread turns about and takes fate away; for fate is like dread, and dread is like possibility ... a witch's letter.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
The Concept of Dread
Thy fate is like to his who glared, in mirth,
A meteor of wrath and power unblest,
Purging, perchance, some grossness from the earth,
But trenching with deep thunder-scars her breast.
WILLIAM BALL
Creation
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
The controversy about the fate of humanity is central and inherent in our cultural life. An apprehensive watchfulness hangs in the air. This is a sign of the times. There is no end to the facts and statistics cited as evidence in support of the opinions about where we are heading. Optimism and pessimism, enthusiasm and alarm, all shades, all degrees. There are penetrating insights, and illuminating interpretations of institutions, behavior and events. Persuasive arguments and diagnosis, an abundant bibliography, and a sleepless irony that misses nothing. We watch ourselves closely.
MARTY GLASS
Yuga
I am a firm believer in fate. That no matter what we feel or what we may think we want or even what's best for us, that it is all predetermined. And most importantly, fate is completely out of our hands. Therefore, I decided long ago to let life happen as it happens. I also strongly believe that we are all here for a reason, something to be learned, and by simply letting life take its course than we shall learn what that is.
WANDA F. ROSS
Reconcilable Fate
Fate plays a role in many heroic legends. Oedipus must kill the Sphinx because the prize is the queen, his mother, whom he is fated to marry. The word "sphinx" in Greek, cognate with "sphincter," is from sphingo, meaning "I clutch" or "I strangle." She is herself a version of necessity, the tight outline that is the periphery of the universe. Like the Furies and other monsters embodying fate, the Sphinx is a mixed creature, in her case part woman, part lion. When Oedipus answers the riddle and destroys the monster, he thinks that he is liberating a foreign city called Thebes; but in fact, killing the fatal Sphinx allows him to go home, as heroes must--home to complete his fate. He had murdured his father "at the place where the three roads meet" -- the crossroads, the junction of choice. Having killed the obstructive stranger, his father, he had felt "free" -- to take the fatal road home, to encounter the Sphinx, and so to win his mother for his bride, as the Oracle of Apollo had foretold.
MARGARET VISSER
Beyond Fate
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
Fate isn't moral. Most people have the idea that they have the possibility to choose and have a free will. Ironically enough, these people only have the illusion that they can choose; in fact their future is already existing in their past.
ERIC DE VRIES
Hedge-Rider
When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had their beginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments that shine for me curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that made me take this turning at the crossroads, trivial and fortuitous the meeting, and light as gossamer the thread that first knit me to my friend. These are full of wonder; more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I did not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the threshold; but the word was not spoken, the hand was not held out, and the Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim as a into the waste realms of non-existence.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia