Quotes About Fate

Know that it's your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped." —ANTHONY ROBBINS

A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.

She was not softly delicate in all her ways; but in disposition and temper she was altogether generous. I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman.

but things had arranged themselves, as they often do, rather than been arranged by him.

The only question was whether he must die at once speechless, unconscious, stricken to death by his first heavy fit, or whether by due aid of medical skill he might not be so far brought back to this world as to become conscious of his state and enabled to address one prayer to his Maker before he was called to meet Him face to face at the judgement seat.

You can't alter a man's nature. Oswald was born to be a master of hounds, and you were born to be a Secretary of State.

That some repent no one can doubt; but I am inclined to believe that most men and women take their lots as they find them, marrying as the birds do by force of nature, and going on with their mates with a general, though not perhaps an undisturbed satisfaction, feeling inwardly assured that Providence, if it have not done the very best for them, has done for them as well as they could do for themselves with all the thought in the world.

What did it matter, even though he should embrace her? It was her lot to undergo misery, and as she had not chosen to take poison, the misery must be endured. She rose as he entered and gave him her hand.

There were many things about this woman that were not altogether what a husband might wish. She was not softly delicate in all her ways; but in disposition and temper she was altogether generous. I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman.

The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Nous ne sommes pas libres. Et le ciel peut encore nous tomber sur la tête. Et le théâtre est fait pour nous apprendre d'abord cela

La indiferencia es el peso muerto de la historia. La indiferencia opera potentemente en la historia. Opera pasivamente, pero opera. Es la fatalidad; aquello con que no se puede contar. Tuerce programas, y arruina los planes mejor concebidos. Es la materia bruta desbaratadora de la inteligencia.

But in a strange way, I am comforted by the truth. Death comes for us. You may get ten minutes on this earth or you may get eighty years but nobody gets out alive. Accepting this rule gives me a funny flicker of peace.

Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]

It is likely that unlikely things should happen

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon

Every tragedy consists in tying and untying of a knot.

The saddest of all tragedies - the wasted life

Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.

For this alone is lacking even to God, to make undone the things that have once been done. (Quoting Agathon)

Every tragedy falls into two parts, — Complication and Unravelling or Denouement.

Pero a todas las cosas de que puede disponer el hombre, puede darse un destino bueno o malo, y la riqueza es una de estas cosas.