Quotes About Fate

And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen

Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force.

Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.

For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, misfortune his own fault.

We won't be friends, you know that yourself. And whether we will be the happiest or the unhappiest of people - is in your power.

They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

I've got four sons in the army, but I'm not crying about it. It's all in God's hands: you may die in your bed, or God may spare you in battle,

But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already… it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?

He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything.

The fate of books depends on the understanding of those who read them.

He had great faith in his own fortune. When planning anything he always felt in advance firmly convinced of success and fate smiled to him.

But it is Tolstoy's understanding of life that the fate of each man and woman is determined by forces beyond their control; these forces include the dictatorship of social demands.

Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it.

Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people—that's in your hands.

Therefore, all these causes-billions of causes-coincided so as to bring about what happened. And consequently none of them was the exclusive cause of the event, but the event had to take place simply because it had to take place.

And at that moment Pierre felt that Hélène not only could, but must, be his wife, and that it could not be otherwise. He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

Why did it happen this way and not otherwise? Because this is how it happened.

Now they are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now they are merry... the beasts!

You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you need, you are very likely to lose all you have. You know the proverb, 'Loss and gain are brothers twain.' It often happens that people who are wealthy one day are begging their bread the next.

Kings are the slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes.

Chance created the situation; genius utilized it," says history. But what is chance? What is genius? The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena.

Y lo más terrible es que tengo la culpa de todo y sin embargo no soy culpable. En eso consiste mi tragedia