quotations about fate
The best of men cannot suspend their fate:
The good die early, and the bad die late.
DANIEL DEFOE
Character of the late Dr. S. Annesley
Fate is a manifestation of natural causes. That’s it. It’s not a conscious entity. It has no plan.
WALTER WYKES
The Fly
One could not know where it was that one had taken the path one was upon but only that one was upon it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
Struggling against your fate is like wrestling the wind.
FRANCINE RIVERS
Unveiled: Tamar
Men make their own history; but they make it under given conditions, and they become entangled thereby in a fate which is in part the result of other men having made their own history earlier.
REINHARD BENDIX
Force
Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time.
JAMES LEVINE
The Blue Notebook
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Illustrated London News, Apr. 29, 1922
Dread discovers fate, but when the individual would put his confidence in fate, dread turns about and takes fate away; for fate is like dread, and dread is like possibility ... a witch's letter.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
The Concept of Dread
See thou, whatsoever be thy name -- whether Fate, Life, or Devil! I cast thee down my gauntlet, I challenge thee to battle! Men of faint heart may bow before thy mysterious power, thy face of stone may inspire them with dread, in thy unbroken silence they may discern the birth of calamity and an impending avalanche of woe. But I am daring and strong, and I challenge thee to battle! Let us draw our swords, and join our bucklers, and rain such blows upon each other's crests as shall cause the very earth to shake again! Ha! Come forth and fight with me!
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
But if fate, as a limit-determination, still seems more powerful than free will, there are two things we should not forget: first that fate is only an abstract concept, a force without matter; that for the individual there is only an individual fate, that fate is nothing else but a chain of events; that man, as soon as he acts, creates his own events, determines his own fate; that, in general, events, insofar as they affect him, are, consciously or unconsciously, brought about by himself and must suit him. The activity of man, however, does not first begin with birth. But already with the embryo and perhaps--who can be certain here--already with his parents and forefathers. All of you who believe in the immortality of the soul, unless you are willing to allow the development of the mortal out of something immortal or are willing to grant that the soul flies about in thin air until it is at last lodged in a body, must also believe in the pre-existence of the soul. The Hindu says: Fate is nothing but the acts we have committed in a prior state of our being.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"Freedom of Will and Fate"
The coward fears the prick of Fate, not he who dares all, becoming himself the dreaded one.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
We must now be trained to do something we formerly assumed everyone would do simply by virtue of being human, being at one with an immemorial 'internal tradition': not identically, not correctly, but in one of the countless variations and moments, the 'give and take', whose dynamic interplay told the story and composed the spontaneous equilibrium of the commonweal, unplanned, unpremeditated, and 'unintentional'--just as the interaction of innumerable entities, elements and events composes the immense harmony, the perfection, of Nature: individually and collectively neither 'right' nor 'wrong', neither for better nor for worse, neither happy nor unhappy, neither 'correct' nor 'incorrect', neither 'progressive' nor 'reactionary', neither structured nor unstructured, neither wise nor foolish, but 'as it is', 'as things go', the Will of God, the fall of the dice, karma, Fate, the wheel of fortune, the Way. The Way that is beyond and prior to our judgments or discriminations or partisanships, the Way, the ancient Tao we once were, once saw, once recognized, once adored, as our own, our Self.
MARTY GLASS
Yuga
My fate is like a massive tree whose fruit is poison and whose leaves are sorrow.
ABOLQASEM FERDOWSI
Shahnameh
There is reason for Fate always being personified as a female, for its utter caprice is intelligible only on that theory.
JOEL BENTON
Travelers Record, Jan. 1893
Several of the Fallacies instanced by the ancients turn on the supposition of ... an irrevocable Fate, which I do not admit; but the error in such cases ... arises from introducing the idea of human agency as something contingent into the reasoning at a later stage--a supposition which is inconsistent with the former. Such is the argument ascribed to the sick man; if I am fated to recover, I shall recover whether I employ a Physician or not; if I am fated to die, I shall die whether I employ a Physician or not; consequently the employment of a Physician can have no effect on the issue, and I will not employ him. This reasoning is inconsistent with the assumption of an universal irrevocable Fate, since it assumes that the employment or non-employment of a Physician is in the power of the sick man. If all things are determined by an irrevocable Fate, this Fate has already determined either that a Physician shall be consulted or that he shall not, and all deliberation on the subject must, therefore, be resultless. And while this consideration disposes of the practical Conclusion, I will not call in a Physician, it may be added that even the theoretical Conclusion, it is indifferent whether a Physician is called in or not, does not follow from the Premisses. For Fate does not exclude second causes, unless we assume that Fate never makes use of one thing to accomplish another. Fate may have not only ordained that the sick man shall recover, but that his recovery shall be caused by the attendance of a Physician--this attendance being, of course, ordained by Fate also. Nor could the sick man even infer, it is indifferent whether I resolve to call in a Physician or not: for Fate may have ordained that the sick man's resolution to call in the Physician (a resolution likewise produced by Fate) shall be the cause of his attendance, and that his attendance shall be the cause of the ultimate recovery which has been ordained by Fate.
WILLIAM HENRY STANLEY MONCK
An Introduction to Logic
Necessity or chance
Approach not me; and what I will is fate.
MILTON
Paradise Lost
All that is called Destiny or Fate is none other than the result of our thoughtlessness and our mistrust of ourselves; we should know that all that is created on earth is created by its sole Master and Laborer -- Man.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Human beings have always been obsessed with fate. It hangs over them like a dark shadow. Fate implies finitude; the knowledge that life, whether of the individual or of the species, has natural limits. The fate of each person is their death, and the fate of the species is the extinction of life on the planet whether because of the finite span of existence of the sun, or some other natural cause. Fate in this sense has always been an important component of human culture, deriving its power as an idea from the fact that there are features of the human condition which are inevitable and unalterable. Life stands in opposition to it in a permanent creative tension.
ANDREW GAMBLE
Politics and Fate
Fate and the dooming gods are deaf to tears.
JOHN DRYDEN
Aeneis
Fate always aids the undoomed man, if his courage holds out.
EMILY G. HOOKER
Poet Lore