348 Fate Quotes

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad.

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

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

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?

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.

How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!

What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us.

You cannot run faster than a bullet.

It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.

Love cannot save you from your own fate.

Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.

Every dog must have his day.

There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

If character is destiny, the good are damned.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

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.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

Let the black flower blossom as it may!

Time is the king of all men, he is their parent and their grave, and gives them what he will and not what they crave.

Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.

What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.

The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.

Chance and chance alone has a message for us... Only chance can speak to us.

There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike-no bail, no demurrer.

I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million-a gamble for high stakes.

To each his suff'rings: all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain; Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?

Sometimes there is relief, sometimes there is new inner energy, and one stands up after it; till at last, someday, one perhaps doesn't stand up any more, que soit, but that is nothing extraordinary, and I repeat, in my opinion, such is the common human fate.

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Every day the bucket a-go a well, one day the bottom a-go drop out

If Aims impel these Astral Ones The ones allowed to know Know that which makes them as forgot As Dawn forgets them - now

'A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.' (p. 241)

Like a blind spinner in the sun, I tread my days: I know that all the threads will run Appointed ways. I know each day will bring its task, And being blind no more I ask.

I have had many troubles, but the worst of them never came.

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet; And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end. For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory.

In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Here's a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate: And, whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate.

If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

Saw it written and i saw it say Pink moon is on its way And none of you stand so tall Pink moon's gonna get ye all.

I knew it would soon be the end, so I played the part, you know, the part of-how shall I say, I don't know.

The essential is to go on squirming forever at the end of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting god to plague his creatures, per pro his chosen shits.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation.'

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait, Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing They mock the air with idle state.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, Till the Spinner of the Years Said 'Now!' And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

Every night, and every morn, Some to misery are born. Every morn, and every night, Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night.

And though circuitous and obscure The feet of Nemesis how sure!

Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy, And always blind, and often tipsy; Sometimes for years and years together, She 'll bless you with the sunniest weather, Bestowing honour, pudding, pence, You can't imagine why or whence;- Then in a moment-Presto, pass!- Your joys are withered like the grass;

To-morrow is, ah, whose?

We Bokonists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon 'If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons,' writes Bokonon, 'that person may be a member of your karass.' At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, 'Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.' By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free form as an amoeba.

Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life

The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready to Kiss any ones Arse.

Chorus: O suitably attired in leather boots Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not understand a word I say, Nod with your hand to signify as much. Alcmaeon: I journeyed hither a Boeotian road. Chorus: Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars? Alcmaeon: Plying by turns my partnership of legs. Chorus: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus? Alcmaeon: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes. Chorus: To learn your name would not displease me much. Alcmaeon: Not all that men desire do they attain.

We for a certainty are not the first Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

And today I stand by this same view. Fate, or Providence, will give the victory to those who most deserve it. : And when now, after 10 years, I again survey this period, I can say that upon no people has Providence ever bestowed more successes than upon us. The miracles we have achieved in the last three years in the face of a whole world of enemies are unique in history, especially the crises we very naturally often had in these years.

Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

Of all kinds of fate the least deceptive is the one that is lived.

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott.

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more.

I am no ordinary woman, and born to a different fate. I would not go whimpering.

There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.

While thus he threw his Elbow round, Depopulating all the Ground, And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut Each stroke between the Earth and Root, The edged Stele by careless chance Did into his own Ankle glance; And there among the Grass fell down, by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.

Circumstances over which I have no control.

'Well, every one for himself, and Providence for us all--as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens.'

He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly, As if he knew for certain he walked to death: But with his usual pace,-deliberate, firm, Looking about him calmly, watching the world, Taking his ease . . .

The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street, The young girl hums beneath her breath. One goes out to beauty, and does not know it. And one goes out to death.

No lover in any language, and certainly no poet, has confessed to missing the mark more often than Dafydd ap Gwilym. Uncooperative husbands, quick-triggered alarms, crones and walls, strong locks, floods and fogs and bogs and dogs are for ever interposing themselves between him and golden-haired Morfudd, black-browed Dyddgu, or Gwen the infinitely fair. But a great trier, even in church.

How can you hope to win against goddamn time travelers? It's like playing blackjack when the dealer is God. : Come to think of it, all of life is a blackjack game with God as the dealer, isn't it? So this is no worse.

How did they meet? By chance, like everybody ... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?

You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom.