quotations about fate
Fate knows all about you, it knows your fears and your weaknesses and your confidences and strengths, and it can be ready for all of them when it decides that the time is right. It can move you like a pawn in a terrible game of chess, sacrifice you for the good of others, drop you from a building you should never have been inside, give you a disease that no one has ever heard of. Luck and chance are impartial. Fate is active. It picks on people. Almost as if it thinks about things too much ...
TIM LEBBON
Face
Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast,
He dieth not, unless the appointed time,
The limit of his life's span, coincide;
Nor does the man who by the hearth at home
Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.
AESCHYLUS
Fragment
If fate be not, then what can we foresee?
And how can we avoid it if it be?
If by free will in our own paths we move,
How are we bounded by decrees of above?
Whether we drive, or whether we are driven,
If ill, 'tis ours; if good, the act of heaven.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Tempest
In a curious sense, we all must admit that our fate is indeed a part of our existence. Whether we like it or not, we are beings who do not control all, or even most, of what goes on to make us who we are. So, on the one hand, if we appeal to fate as some kind of explanatory force we are grossly mistaken about how concepts explain; but if we deny that our fate is indeed an essential part of who we are, we are likewise grossly mistaken, and existentially beguiled.
MICHAEL GELVEN
Truth and Existence
So long as it fated, fate didn't care what it fated.
CHINA MIéVILLE
Kraken
The working out of fate isn't just some large anonymous and separate natural system that surrounds you; ultimately, it is you, too. We're part of this world, inseparably; this means that all of your thoughts, dreams, urges, ideas, aren't just "yours"--they are the world's. They are the threads of fate. For all that, you are still the vehicle of their expression, and you bear responsibility for them.
ROBIN ARTISSON
The Flaming Circle
Fate is just the steps we take to follow destiny.
JUSTIN ROBERT HARNISH
King
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
Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
Fate is like a coconut--you never know when it's gonna fall. Can be good, can be bad. If it falls on your head, tough luck. If it falls at your feet, you've got something sweet to eat, something sweet to drink.
MARILENE PHIPPS-KETTLEWELL
The Company of Heaven
Fate's sentence written on the brow no hand can e'er efface.
BHARTRHARI
"The Praise of Destiny"
Free will appears unfettered, deliberate; it is boundlessly free, wandering, the spirit. But fate is a necessity; unless we believe that world history is a dream-error, the unspeakable sorrows of mankind fantasies, and that we ourselves are but the toys of our fantasies. Fate is the boundless force of opposition against free will. Free will without fate is just as unthinkable as spirit without reality, good without evil. Only antithesis creates the quality.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"Fate and History"
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
RONALD REAGAN
First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
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"
A man's character is his fate.
HERACLITUS
All gamblers are losers.... Because, in the end, if you gamble, you're playing against fate, and fate always wins.
KATY LEDERER
Poker Face
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 loves the fearless.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart,
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Fate of Poverty in London
Fate often allows a future to take shape with no regard for our expectation, plan, or readiness. Fate's skillful editing of our life choices is like the careful grooming of lads on their first day of school: combed, polished, scrubbed, newly dressed, and glowing too. This is how we become ready for our life lessons.
DAVID RICHO
The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know