201 Destiny Quotes

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul, On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

According to Buddhism, individuals are masters of their own destiny. And all living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need?

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men's treasures are not yours.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.

It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip.

Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.

Are we no greater than the noise we make Along one blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so?

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

For rarely man escapes his destiny.

Man proposes, and God disposes.

We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me.

A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.

Born in a cellar, and living in a garret.

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

My whole life has been decided by fate.

Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.

A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.

As to what happened next, it is possible to maintain that the hand of heaven was involved, and also possible to say that when men are desperate no one can stand up to them.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

The Spirit does not accept volunteers.

I've always wanted to go to England; I've always felt a tremendous drawing to England - especially the Elizabethan period. I felt I was familiar with a lot of it - more than what I was familiar with from what I read and studied in school. I went to England. I started driving. I drove to Stonehenge and found that I had been there. It was familiar to me. I went to the tower of London and knew that I had been there. It was more than just feeling vibrations, which a lot of people can do - feel, you know, vibrations of a place that has antiquity screaming through it. It was an irrefutable fact. It was like coming home for me.

Everything that happens is supposed to be And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going.

I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to.

Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.

I fulfilled my duty against destiny. / Uselessly? No, for I fulfilled it.

As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.

'Any road', said Carlyle, 'even this road to Entepfuhl, will take you to the end of the world'. But the Entepfuhl road, if taken in its entirety, and to the end, goes back to Entepfuhl; so Entepfuhl, where we already were, is that very end of the world we were seeking.

Dans toutes les existences, on note une date ou bifurque la destinee, soit vers une catastrophe, soit vers le succes.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him from behind ... The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan but to fall in with the forces at work - to do every moment's duty aright - that being the part in the process allotted to us: and let come - not what will, for there is no such thing - but what the eternal thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first.

Intimates are predestined.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

What can and doesn't have to be always, at the end, surrenders to something that has to be.

Prevent the American people from crossing the Rocky Mountains? You might as well command Niagara not to flow. We must fulfill our destiny.

Schon war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Twice and thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name.

We met briefly years ago. I remember thinking, 'Ouch.' It was just hello, but the contact was electric. That was in 1993. It wasnt until 1998, when I went to do the Polanski film The Ninth Gate and was in the lobby of the hotel, getting messages. I turned around and across the lobby saw this back. She had on a dress with an exposed back. I thought, 'Wow.' Suddenly the back turned and she looked at me. I walked right over, and there were those eyes again. I knew it was her. She asked, 'Do you remember me?' I said, 'Oh yeah.' We had a drink, and it was over with at that point. I knew I was in big trouble. (2004)

We shall start from new premises.... The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself - not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. 'I believe in transhumanism': once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Pekin man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.

Religion in some form is a universal function of man in society, the organ for dealing with the problems of destiny, the destiny of individual men and women, of societies and nations, and of the human species as a whole. Religions always have some intellectual or ideological framework, whether myth or theological doctrine; some morality or code of behaviour, whether barbaric or ethically rationalized; and some mode of ritualized or symbolic expression, in the form of ceremonial or celebration, collective devotion or thanksgiving, or religious art...

'Andabamos sin buscarnos pero sabiendo que andabamos para encontrarnos.'

Muss es sein? Es muss sein.

Thus Fate knocks the door.

I feel as if I am being driven towards an unknown goal. As soon as it is attained and there will no longer be any use for me, an atom will be sufficient to annihilate me; but until then, all human efforts whether in Paris or in the army will be powerless to prevail against me.

I have been called upon to change the face of the world.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so.

Only in storybooks do you get to dance with a princess until midnight. But it happened to me.

'As a people, we have not been able to chart a clear map toward a common destiny. We will not be able to do this if our leaders continue to promote sectional and separate development.'

'God opens and closes doors for your benefit but you must be willing to share the journey that God has set out for you and in the end you will reap what you sow.'

Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not...and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever.

The Tower. Somewhere ahead, it waited for him - the nexus of Time, the nexus of Size.

The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would someday come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle.

It was the tower. The Dark Tower. It stood on the horizon of a vast plain the color of blood in the violent setting of a dying sun. He couldn't see the stairs which spiraled up and up and up within its brick shell, but he could see the windows which spiraled up along that staircase's way, and saw the ghosts of all the people he had ever known pass through them. Up and up they marched, and an arid wind brought him the sound of voices calling his name. Roland . . . Come . . . Roland . . . come . . . come . . . come . . .come . .

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.

I've never done much, but I've lived my whole life thinking of myself as the only real man. And if I'm right, then a limpid, lonely horn is going to trumpet through the dawn some day, and a turgid cloud laced with light will sweep down, and the poignant voice of glory will call for me from the distance - and I'll have to jump out of bed and set out alone. That's why I've never married. I've waited, and waited, and here I am past thirty.

The new understanding of the universe has come about through the new knowledge amassed in the last hundred years - by psychologists, biologists, and other scientists, by archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. It has defined man's responsibility and destiny - to be an agent for the rest of the world in the job of realizing its inherent potentialities as fully as possible. It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution - appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

Freedom and Destiny (1981)