FATE QUOTES VII

quotations about fate

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


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 never knocks at the wrong door, dear. You just may not be ready to answer.

SARALEE ROSENBERG

Fate and Ms. Fortune


Fate is the most real thing that I see in my own and anyone else's life. It is not a fiction, but the cruellest of pincers pinching our lives.

ALEKSEI FEDOROVICH LOSEV

The Dialectics of Myth


For man is man and master of his fate.

ALFRED

LORD TENNYSON, Idylls of the King


Fate is what Heaven imparts.

DAGOBERT D. RUNES

The Dictionary of Philosophy


The idea of fate has always had a special appeal in religious, mystical, and philosophical thinking. There are several compelling reasons for this fascination, the most obvious of which is that human life is short and human efforts are frequently futile. As a species endowed with the capacity for thought, people want to find some kind of explanation, purpose, or meaning for their lives. The idea that a superior force--fate--shapes the course of their lives and determines what becomes of them helps people to interpret their experiences and adjust themselves to their circumstances. Arising out of a state of anxiety and bewilderment, it thus fulfills a basic human need for order and harmony.

DALYA COHEN-MOR

introduction, A Matter of Fate


Fate is irrevocable, and invincible, and an unchangeable decree; a necessity of all things and actions, according to eternal appointment.

SENECA

Epistles


Fate comes by our own agency. It belongs to our underlying spiritual values, because it is unattainable without experience of the world, and therefore differs from one person to the next.

STELIOS RAMPHOS

Fate and Ambiguity in Oedipus the King


Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed
Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven.

EURIPIDES

Fragment


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


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


Fate is the all-round determinateness of a person's existence that necessarily predetermines all the events of that person's life; hence, life is merely the actualization (and fulfillment) of what was inherent from the very outset in the determinateness of the person's existence. From within himself, the person builds up his life (thinks, feels, acts) in accordance with particular goals, by actualizing various forms of that which has validity with respect to meaning and objects, upon which his life is directed: he acts in a particular way because he feels he ought to act that way, considers it proper, necessary, desirable to act that way, wants to act that way, etc. And yet, in reality, he merely actualizes the necessity inherent in his own fate, the determinateness of his own existence, his own countenance in being. Fate is the artistic transcription of the trace in being which is left by a life that is regulated from within itself by purpose; it is the artistic expression of the deposit in being laid down by a life that is understood or interpreted totally from within itself.

MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH BAKHTIN

Art and Answerability


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


Looking backward always presents an overdetermined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time.

REINHARD BENDIX

Force


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


The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.

BRAD MELTZER

The Book of Fate


There are those who hold that there is a pattern to all that is said and done in this world, that no thing happens without reason nor out of time. As to that, I cannot speak, for I have seen too many threads cut short to believe it, but of a surety, I have seen too the weft of my fate shuttled on the loom. If there is a pattern, I do not think there is anyone among us who can stand at a great enough distance to discern it; yet I will not say that it is not so.

JACQUELINE CAREY

Kushiel's Dart


Consciousness is, in fact, what makes us human. It is not thinking that sets us apart from most other animals as many believe but our ability to think about ourselves. Most animals are not self-conscious, and that distinction robs them of the volition and purpose that allow us to determine our own fate--and to alter it as we go along. It is consciousness that makes will what it is--a capacity through which we make choices rather than merely responding to biological impulses. With consciousness we have memories that help us make plans and control the future; we can produce the most radical of discontinuities.

MICHAEL LEWIS

Altering Fate


Trying to alter fate is like trying to catch a bullet.

TONNERRE

The Future Affects the Past