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Quotations about
Fate and Destiny
That's life — whichever way you turn, fate sticks out its foot to trip you. ~Martin Goldsmith & Martin Mooney, Detour, 1945, spoken by the character Al Roberts
Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. ~William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), "Double Ballade of Life and Fate"
On a windswept hill
by a billowing sea,
my destiny sits
and waits for me.
~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
...my fate had stepped across the borderland towards me. ~F. W. Robinson, "The Young Lady in Grey," Women Are Strange, and Other Stories, 1883
Fortune comes to a man; he cannot go to it. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
It is not what life brings us, but the manner in which we receive it, that shapes our destiny. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882
Sometimes, perhaps, we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Fate laughs at probabilities! ~Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton
Don't be always quarreling with Fate. We too often heap our faults on Fate's shoulders. ~Minna Thomas Antrim (1861–1950), Don'ts for Girls, 1902
A door that seems to stand open must be a man's size, or it is not the door that Providence means for him. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Last I heard from my destiny, it wanted me to go one-quarter mile and make a legal U‑Turn. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Fate can be changed... except for when it can't.
O Fate! Have you no other gift
Than voices in a muffled room?
Why do you live behind your door,
And hide yourself in angry gloom?
~Harold Monro, "Fate," c.1921
He is God-like who pulls hard against the swift stream of Fate, though he may go over the terrible Niagara of circumstances. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
The pulse of destiny still shook the foundations of the world. The will that had willed this thing to happen had now another will to deal with—nor should the stream of Fate swallow up his heart without a cry. ~Frederic Jesup Stimson, In Cure of Her Soul, 1906 [a little altered
The light goes out on purpose sometimes so we can get lost and then realize we weren't even on the right path to begin with. ~Michelle Christine, @MichelleC3333, December 2009 entry to The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter, @quotegarden
In short, there ought to be no such thing as Fate. As long as we use this word, it is a sign of our impotence and that we are not yet ourselves. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1842
It is sad when two people turn from the paths they're traveling, and their paths go on to cross without them. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare — or, if not, some equally brainy bird — who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping. ~P.G. Wodehouse
Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove. ~P.G. Wodehouse
Whose madness was a challenge hurled at fate... ~Edgar Fawcett, "At a Window," Songs of Doubt and Dream, 1891
Fate comes unswerving like a frightened horse
Sky-maddened on a white mid-afternoon.
Fate comes unseeing, and the blinded hooves
Drum a shrill thunder to a noteless tune
That dies into the forest, where an owl
Returns it to the midnight and the moon...
~Mark Van Doren, "Fate Comes Unswerving," 1933
Fate loves the fearless... ~James Russell Lowell
We cannot shape our course to the wind that bloweth where it listeth and arrive anywhere at the end of the voyage... The winds blow adverse to the course of the mariner, and though his tack may be wide, it is always in the direction of his voyage. The human ships must always have a fair wind square in the stern or they throw the rudder to the dogs and write Fate on the log. Fate is only another name for ignorance, incompetence and cowardice...
There was never any other Destiny in the career of Napoleon, but the Destiny of each moment lived to the full and each opportunity grasped at the hilt. There was no Fate in Grant's career but the fate of dogged persistence. The successes of the world, as they stand out in bold relief against the skyline of history, can all be resolved to the one ultimate analysis: The man did his best all the time... A man may do and be what he will in the strong mastery of that complex factor of humanity, himself. That is Fate. ~William Ellis, 1904
There is no ultimate fate but the indomitable will. ~William Ellis, 1904
CATHERINE: Do you believe in fate? Destiny?
VELEMENTOV: When you're young, you have hope and call it destiny. When you're old, it becomes fate.
~The Great, "Meatballs at the Dacha," 2020, written by Tony McNamara, Vanessa Alexander, and Gretel Vella, based on the 2008 play by Tony McNamara
And meanwhile Fate, with that humorous malice that so often distinguishes her, was steering me and Dolores through the world until we came together.
Bear in mind, fate may be friend as well as foe. The condition which you worry about may be a kindly circumstance in the plot to be yet unraveled. There are other pages in the book of life which you have not read. ~Ellsworth R. Bathrick (1863–1917), "Don't Worry Book," 1909, as quoted by A. W. Overmyer, 1918
Our destiny hides among our free choices, disguised as the free-est of all. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
And yet—and yet—ah, who understands?
We men and women are complex things!
A hundred tunes Fate's inexorable hands
May play on the sensitive soul-strings.
~Amy Levy, "In a Minor Key (An Echo from a Larger Lyre)," c.1884
Stardust sails endless distances through silent ages until, white-hot, it strikes a ready heart. ~Terri Guillemets, "Love at first sight," 2007
I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Fortune has more power over a man than his own forethought. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856
Alas, by the time Fate caught up with my life, Chance had it all planned. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Clemens held that there was no such thing as an accident: that it was all forewritten in the day of the beginning; that every event, however slight, was embryonic in that first instant of created life, and immutably timed to its appearance in the web of destiny... invested in life's primal atom. ~Albert Bigelow Paine
You are fate's shadow or fate's sun, depending on which way you turn. ~Terri Guillemets
O, I am fortune's fool! ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, c.1594
Sometimes fate brings two people together by causing one to misinterpret a smile. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. ~A. Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902
Some torture Fate beyond recognition rather than let him have his way. ~Terri Guillemets
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