quotations about fate
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 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 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's always tricky. She likes to wait till she gets you by the back of the neck, so you can't do a thing, and then passes you all that's coming to you.
RIDGWELL COLLUM
The Law-Breakers
Fate's sentence written on the brow no hand can e'er efface.
BHARTRHARI
"The Praise of Destiny"
Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
Submit, then, to fate, always assured that whatever is, is best.
EDU HASSAN
New York Mirror
The furnace which melts gold, also hardens clay. Before blaming thy fate, therefore, find whether thou art gold or clay.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
All gamblers are losers.... Because, in the end, if you gamble, you're playing against fate, and fate always wins.
KATY LEDERER
Poker Face
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
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 is like being dealt a hand of cards with which we must play the game of life.
JOHN A. SANFORD
What Men Are Like
Nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Stellar Moments in Human History
When we consider the incidents of former days, and perceive, while reviewing the long line of causes, how the most important events of our lives originated in the most trifling circumstances; how the beginning of our greatest happiness or greatest misery is to be attributed to a delay, to an accident, to a mistake; we learn a lesson of profound humility.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
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
A man's character is his fate.
HERACLITUS
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
Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be; and be this so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.
ELIE WIESEL
The Time of the Uprooted
Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.
FRANK FRANKFORT MOORE
The Original Woman