quotations about fate
The ragman is fate, but you bring him to pass.
There's never a rag, but you make it, alas!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Ragman"
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.
LEMONY SNICKET
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope
We seal our fate with the choices we make.
GLORIA ESTEFAN
Seal Our Fate
Fate shows a different face, the gulf between what we are and what we think we are.
STELIOS RAMPHOS
Fate and Ambiguity in Oedipus the King
Fate is like the oculist, who, when about to open to a blind eye the world of light, first bandages and darkens the other eye that sees.
THOMAS CARLYLE
The Works of Thomas Carlyle
All things bend to help the man
Who seeks to harmonize
His own free will with nature's plan,
And prove himself most wise.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Destiny"
Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Interesting Times
Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Fate ... is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought--for causes which are unpenetrated.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
The powerless worship Luck and Fate.
MASON COOLEY
City Aphorisms
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Principles of Psychology
O God! that one might read the book of fate.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Henry IV
Fate throws fortune, but not everyone catches.
POLISH PROVERB
The Fates but only spin the coarser clue;
The finest of the wool is left for you.
JOHN DRYDEN
Palamon and Arcite
Maybe Fate isn't the pond you swim in but the fisherman floating on top of it, letting you run the line wild until you are weary enough to be reeled back in.
JODI PICOULT
Vanishing Acts
Every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water drowns ship and sailor, like grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your bark, and the wave which drowned it, will be cloven by it, and carry it, like its own foam, a plume and a power.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Everyone shares the same fate.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.
GROUCHO MARX
Woman's Day Magazine, May 8, 2007
What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI
It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Path to Rome