quotations about fate
In the classical Greek view, human affairs are subject to the will and whim of the gods. Good and ill fortune alternate in quite unpredictable ways. Hence, knowledge has the purpose of fortifying the soul and assuaging the envy of the gods. The wise man always reflects upon the extreme vicissitudes of fate. In times of the greatest triumph he bears in mind the transitoriness of life; in times of the greatest calamity he reflects upon the unpredictability of fortune, perhaps even the possibility of a renewal. Knowledge is virtue where it helps men attain inner peace in the midst of the fate that is their lot.
REINHARD BENDIX
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Force
Fate isn't some middle-aged man with a squint who won't recognize you if you change your clothes.
MEG ROSOFF
Just In Case
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
Fate happens.
DOTTI ENDERLE
Hand of Fate
To bear is to conquer our fate.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
"Lines Written on Visiting a Scene in Argyleshire"
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.
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Thy Fate Is Seeking Thee"
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"
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"
Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart,
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Fate of Poverty in London
Why should we try to shield people from fate? Isn't that always wrong? One is fated to be born the child of a certain father, and one can no more escape the consequences of his father's misdeeds than the doer himself can. Perhaps the pain and the shame come from the wish and the attempt to do so, more than from the fact itself. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children. But the children are innocent of evil, and this visitation must be for their good, and will be, if they bear it willingly.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
A Pair of Patient Lovers
So long as it fated, fate didn't care what it fated.
CHINA MIéVILLE
Kraken
Each fate is just, since each individual chooses it freely.
ROBERT APATOW
The Spiritual Art of Dialogue
They may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim: but he who rests on what is has a destiny beyond destiny, and can make mouths of fortune.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
I would not fear nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Of Myself
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 is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony.
GLEN COOK
The Black Company
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
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
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