Quotes About Fate

It seemed that we were condemned to be who we were, which was not a particularly good prospect.

Each one of us will die, naked and alone, on some battlefield not of our own choosing.

Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?

Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day—another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say 'See!' to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply 'Here!' to a body's cry of 'Where?' till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving

She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play

How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! ...I do not deserve my lot! ...O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!

Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!

Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

you temptress,Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon- I could not resist you as soon as I met you again.

I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability.

How unexpected [are] the attacks of destiny!

Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought.

He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain.

but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving.

Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it, Tess? murmured Abraham through his tears.

Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.

Tess was carried along the wings of the hours

Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast.

If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a day or two later.