quotations about fate
For man is man and master of his fate.
ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON, Idylls of the King
Fate is not itself our metaphysical fate, but an opening choice; we can ... turn the account into freedom.
STANLEY CAVELL
Contesting Tears
When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had their beginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments that shine for me curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that made me take this turning at the crossroads, trivial and fortuitous the meeting, and light as gossamer the thread that first knit me to my friend. These are full of wonder; more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I did not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the threshold; but the word was not spoken, the hand was not held out, and the Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim as a into the waste realms of non-existence.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia
An unrelenting, immutable fate is so irreconcilable with the liberty of human actions, with the nature of good and evil, of rewards and punishments, that if we admit of it, there is an end of all religion, of all virtuous endeavors, of all great and generous attempts: it is to no purpose to pray to God, or to trust in him, or to resist temptation, or to be diligent in our business, or prudent and circumspect in our actions; for what will be, will be: or if any means be to be used, that is no matter of our choice or care; but we shall do it as necessarily and mechanically as a watch moves and points to the hour of the day; for fate has, by the same necessity, determined the means and the end, and we can do no more nor less than fate has determined.
ALEXANDER CAMPBELL
The Millenial Harbinger Abridged
Fate is irrevocable, and invincible, and an unchangeable decree; a necessity of all things and actions, according to eternal appointment.
SENECA
Epistles
People often think that their individual fate is everything. How wrong we are! It is enough to contemplate the invisible to know how much there is that is greater than fate. Yes, close your eyes, you will see what light renders invisible. You will see the little shadow in the shadow. You will see the signature from beyond. Listen to that fountain; don't you see every tiny drop of water sparkling in the dark? There is meaning.
HUGUES DE MONTALEMBERT
Invisible: A Memoir
The longest life is but a multiplication of days, nay of hours, nay of moments. Our Fate is set, and the first breath we draw is but the first step towards our last.
SENECA
Epistles
Fate plays a role in many heroic legends. Oedipus must kill the Sphinx because the prize is the queen, his mother, whom he is fated to marry. The word "sphinx" in Greek, cognate with "sphincter," is from sphingo, meaning "I clutch" or "I strangle." She is herself a version of necessity, the tight outline that is the periphery of the universe. Like the Furies and other monsters embodying fate, the Sphinx is a mixed creature, in her case part woman, part lion. When Oedipus answers the riddle and destroys the monster, he thinks that he is liberating a foreign city called Thebes; but in fact, killing the fatal Sphinx allows him to go home, as heroes must--home to complete his fate. He had murdured his father "at the place where the three roads meet" -- the crossroads, the junction of choice. Having killed the obstructive stranger, his father, he had felt "free" -- to take the fatal road home, to encounter the Sphinx, and so to win his mother for his bride, as the Oracle of Apollo had foretold.
MARGARET VISSER
Beyond Fate
The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If we are brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. In the Hindu fables, Vishnu follows Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and crawfish up to elephant; whatever form she took, he took the male form of that kind, until she became at last woman and goddess, and he a man and a god. The limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched at the top.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Believing in fate has probably always arisen in part because of the delights and terrors of storytelling. We have to realize--to learn--that in life we are not the readers but the authors of our own narratives.
MARGARET VISSER
Beyond Fate
Fate is like our guardian angel who watches over us when we tend to stray off of our Divine Path and Purpose. It warns us and gives us a friendly and warm nudge of love to steer us back on track and in the right direction.
MARY BOWERS
Before the Last Teardrop Falls
Fate is a primitive notion that makes no sense in a land of self-made men and women.
J. PETER EUBEN
"Pure Corruption"
Fate and victory shift ... now this way, now that way -- like a line of unarmored men under a hail of enemy arrows.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
The youth should be taught that he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate; that diligence is the mother of good luck; that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
The realm of fate is self-limited, and from every part the decree has gone forth that the realm of freedom shall not be invaded. Fate is one unit, freedom another unit. And there is nothing in the one element of nature that is in the other. There is a line, on the one side of which all is fate and on the other freedom, and neither can trespass upon the territory of the other. Man may utilize both for his good and for the glory of God.
H. H. MOORE
Methodist Review
Fate is not what we decide or make our goal. It is what we are revealed to be in the working out of fate. We act in the dark. Everything we do has a significance that escapes us and overturns all our certainties.
STELIOS RAMPHOS
Fate and Ambiguity in Oedipus the King
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
I presume that it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
A Princess of Mars
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
JOHN DRYDEN
Mac Flecknoe
Fate isn't good or bad; it's the outcome of any choice you make. Simply put, fate is reaping what we have sown into our life. It's a universal principle of life that God places before every one.
JOHN KIM
The Roadmap to True Love