FATE QUOTES II
quotations about fate
Fate is the promise that life is not a random string of tragedy and comedy without meaning. Fate proclaims that our lives are in fact so meaningful, so necessary, that our stories are written by the gods and goddesses, by the heavens themselves. We may only glimpse our fate, hinted by the stars or the creases of our hands; but even this glimpse is evidence of our contract with the universe, that we are players in the great wheel of life and death and rebirth.
SY MONTGOMERY
Spell of the Tiger
Fame and censure, with a tether,
By fate are always link'd together.
JONATHAN SWIFT
"To Dr. Delany"
Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling: if you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in, or out of a door, has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
For all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
BARACK OBAMA
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
Each sacred accent bears eternal weight,
And each irrevocable word is fate.
ALEXANDER POPE
Thebais
Our fate is determined by the first breath we take. Literally, we inhale our destiny, a composite of qi present at that exact moment.
ELIZABETH MORAN
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Feng Shui
Fate laughs at probabilities.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Eugene Aram
Fate never laughs at a man when he is in the mood to laugh too. It always seizes the most inopportune moment for mirth.
ANONYMOUS
The Harvard Advocate, Sep. 26, 1884
How easy 'tis, when destiny proves kind,
With full-spread sails to run before the wind;
But they who 'gainst stiff gales laveering go,
Must be at once resolved and skilful too.
JOHN DRYDEN
"On the Restoration"
Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
The catch-22 is either everything is based on fate or nothing is.
RHONDA BRITTEN
Change Your Life in 30 Days
Fate isn't one straight road ... There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
Wonderful, wonderful, yet again the sword of fate severs the head from the hydra of chance.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
In my view, fate is like intelligence, or beauty, or type z+ lymphocytes--some individuals have a greater supply than others. I, for one, suffer from a deficiency; I am a clerk in a bookstore whose life is devoid of complications or a storyline of its own.
NICOLAS DICKNER
Nikolski
For Providence is the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer of all; while Fate is that ordering which is a part of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence. The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence. Just as when a craftsman perceives in his mind the form of the object he would make, he sets his working power in motion, and brings through the order of time that which he had seen directly and read present to his mind. So by Providence does God dispose all that is to be done, each thing by itself and unchangeably; while these same things which Providence has arranged are worked out by Fate in many ways and in time. Whether, therefore, Fate works by the aid of the divine spirits which serve Providence, or whether it works by the aid of the soul, or of all nature, or the motions of the stars in heaven, or the powers of the angels, or the manifold skill of other spirits, whether the course of Fate is bound together by any or all of these, one thing is certain, namely that Providence is the one unchangeable direct power which gives form to all things which are to come to pass, while Fate is the changing bond, the temporal order of those things which are arranged to come to pass by the direct disposition of God.
KAREN LOUISE JOLLY
Tradition & Diversity
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you--
it's born with us the day that we are born.
HOMER
The Iliad
Fate isn't always failure ... Fate can be a blessing. For example, fate can be getting your eye poked out by the woman you're destined to fall in love with.
KARIN GOODWIN
Bad Advice
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Kafka on the Shore
When the meaning of fate is approached by way of the more spectacular examples, such as the woman struck by paralysis, the danger lies in the fear and loathing that these examples provoke. Fate is seen as cruel and indifferent and curiously selective, as if only the very few were singled out to bear the terrible burdens of fortune, examples to the rest of us warning what could happen. But of course this is absurd. All of us are fated, and at times the sheer improbability of chance adventures that seriously or trivially alter our lives prompts us to wonder about who we are. Had I not remained longer than usual in the office, I would not have met this person, who changed my life. Had the train not been late I would have been able to make this opportunity which would have radically improved my fortune. From chance encounters, to pieces of luck, to lottery tickets, to the military draft, to the color of our eyes and the seat on the plane, we are thrown into situations and events quite beyond our control or even our comprehension. It makes no difference whether we believe in a divine providence or in the sheer randomness of nature, the point is, such important influences in our lives are totally beyond our understanding or control, and it is precisely because such enormously important circumstances cannot be understood in the ordinary way that we are forced to wonder: how do we think about fate at all? Is it better simply to recognize the futility of such a question, and hence develop psychological attitudes to help us avoid considering it altogether, or is it more honest to confront the unrooted truth of our fate and seek to find a way to think about it?
MICHAEL GELVEN
Truth and Existence