Quotes About Fate

it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny;

The year began with the hanging of one man and ended with the drowning of another.

The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered mere coincidence.

When things went wrong they had the consolations of religion. This wasn't just a readiness to accept Fate; this was a quiet and profound conviction about the vanity of all human endeavour.

Nothing could be avoided, and nothing could be foreseen. What was the point of unnecessary fear?

The most fundamental change in people at this time was a weakening of their sense of individual identity; their sense of fate grew correspondingly stronger.

For a moment she felt she was about to reconcile this present time, the words of the man now kissing her, with that time in the past; that she was about to understand the secret currents of her life, about to glimpse what always remains hidden – those depths of the heart where one's fate is decided.

Cuando el sentimiento de melancolía bovina, de irremediable fatalismo se transforma en un lacerante sentido del horror, el absurdo opio del optimismo acude en ayuda de los hombres.

In jedem menschlichen Wesen auf dieser weiten, komplizierten Welt ruht eine erstaunliche Anlage zur Größe. Doch nur selten haben diese verborgenen Gaben die Gelegenheit, sich zu entfalten. Manchmal ist es allein der Zufall des Schicksals.

This story told me that there is no limit to one's ability—certainly not age—to accomplish in life what one must. Within each individual on this large and complicated world there lives an astounding potential of greatness. Yet it is rare that these hidden gifts are brought to life unless by the chance of fate.

There were truths that grew between people which they could not know themselves until some sharp moment of destiny brought them to light.

if Romeo had lived to see Juliet grow old and develop a slight moustache upon her upper lip—what then?

La locomotora sonó con un aire misterioso, como un lamento de compasión por el cargamento destinado a la desgracia.

There are] three possible ways to find meaning in life—even up to the last moment, the last breath…1) a deed we do, a work we create; 2) an experience, a human encounter, a love; and 3) when confronted with an unchangeable fate (such as an incurable disease), a change of attitude toward that fate.

Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.

What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. Why was I not made of stone like thee?

Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien étrange, Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange. La choise simplement d'elle-même arriva. Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va. He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried, He lived, and when he lost his angel, died. It happened calmly, on its own. The way night comes when day is done.

Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange, Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange. La chose simplement d'elle-même arriva, Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le four s'en va.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

The real threat to society is darkness. Humanity is our common lot. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, at least here on earth, in the fate assigned to us. We come of the same void, inhabit the same flesh, are dissolved in the same ashes. But ignorance infecting the human substance turns it black, and that incurable blackness, gaining possession of the soul, becomes Evil.

Everybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heavens sake why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold

He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.