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Fate is a concept involving Time and circumstances, related to those about Destiny, both usually being associated with ideas of predestination, fatalism, or inevitable predetermination, but not necessarily so.
Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate. ~ Virgil
For us, alas! that volume stern
Has many another page to turn. ~ Virgil
- The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
The great, the important day, big with the fate
Of Cato, and of Rome.- Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act I, scene 1.
- I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers. I keep on the straight and narrow path the righteous who follow Enlil's counsel. [...] If I fix a fate, who shall alter it? If I but say the word, who shall change it?
- For whatever reasons, Ray, call it . . . fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.
- Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis Ghostbusters (1984), by "Dr. Peter Venkman".
- Fate has a way of circling back on a man, and taking him by surprise. A man sees things differently at different times in his life. This town didn't seem the same now that he was older.
- John August, Big Fish, based on Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions (1998) by Daniel Wallace, by "Edward Bloom".
- The heart is its own Fate.
- Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Wood and Water. Sunset.
- There's nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy- All You Need is Love, The Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney
- Let those deplore their doom,
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn:
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,
Can smile at Fate, and wonder how they mourn.- James Beattie, The Minstrel (1771), Book I.
- There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradisical future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men.
Can we in any better way reconcile desire and fate?- John Desmond Bernal, The World, the Flesh and the Devil: an Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul (1929) Ch. 1 The Future, pp. 7-8.
- There is no fate but what we make.
- John Brancato and Michael Ferris Terminator Salvation (2010), by "John Connor".
- Many things happen between the cup and the lip.
- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II, Section II. Memb. 3.
- Success, the mark no mortal wit,
Or surest hand, can always hit:
For whatsoe'er we perpetrate,
We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate,
Which in success oft disinherits,
For spurious causes, noblest merits.- Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 879.
- Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.
- Albert Camus, "Entre oui et non" in L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review magazine (March 1950), also quoted in The Artist and Political Vision (1982) by Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Gargas McGrath.
- Fate is created, not ordained.
- Wesley Chu, The Rebirths of Tao (2015), ISBN 978-0-85766-430-3, p. 222
- Fate was turning a page in her Book of Delusions.
- Storm Constantine, Sweet Bruising Skin, in Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (eds.) Black Thorn, White Rose (1994), ISBN 0-380-77129-2, p. 322
- Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread;
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.- William Cowper, in "A Fable" (or "The Raven"), Moral, line 36.
- Le sort fait les parents, la choix fait les amis.
- Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
- Jacques Delille, Malheur at Pitié (1803), canto I.
- He has gone to the demnition bow-wows.
- Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), Chapter 64.
- Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that May be only?
- Fate has carried me
'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand—
Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast
To pierce another.- George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III.
- People are the pawns of fate.
- Kaneko Fumiko, The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman. M.E. Sharpe. 1991. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-87332-801-2. Translated by Jean Inglis
- Marty, the future isn't written. It can be changed. You know that. Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be.
- Doc Emmett Brown, (played by Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future Part III (1990), screenplay by Bob Gale
- How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, as quoted in International Proverbs (2000) by Luzano Pancho Canlas.
- Adam: Nature mandates that mankind will eventually succumb to its poison. However, humans created their own poison, called medicine. It's delusional to believe you can poison Nature to avoid your fate.
- Stiles: No... It's delusional to dismiss people's deaths as "fate."
- Trauma Center: Under the Knife script by Shogo Isogai, (October 4, 2005)
- We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
- William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890) Ch. 4.
- Naomi: Each person is born with their fate written into their own genetic code... it's unchangeable, immutable... But that's not all there is to life. I finally realized that. I told you before. The reason that I was interested in genes and DNA. Because I wanted to know who I was... where I came from. I thought that if I analyzed my DNA I could find out who I was, who my parents were. And I thought that if I knew that, then I'd know what path I should take in life. But I was wrong. I didn't find anything. I didn't learn anything. Just like with the Genome Soldiers... you can input all the genetic information, but that doesn't make them into the strongest soldiers. The most we can say about DNA is that it governs a person's potential strengths... potential destiny. You mustn't allow yourself to be chained to fate... to be ruled by your genes. Humans can choose the type of life they want to live.
- Metal Gear Solid written by Hideo Kojima, Tomokazu Fukushima, (September 3, 1998)
- There is no such thing as a historical fatality; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have hesitated to act when action was still possible.
- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 273
- 'Tis strange how the heart can create
Or colour from itself its fate;
We make ourselves our own distress,
We are ourselves our happiness.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon The Troubadour (1825) title poem, Canto II
- All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Seaside and the Fireside, "The Builders" (1849), st. 1.
- Everything is preordained. Even my responses.
- Doctor Manhattan, Watchmen, issue IX, pg. 5, written by Alan Moore (May, 1987)
- We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us.
- Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Chapter 38
- So long as it fated, fate didn’t care what it fated.
- China Miéville, Kraken (2010), ISBN 978-0-345-49749-9, Chapter 80 (p. 496)
- Fool, don't you know you cannot change your fate.
- "Shadee" in Prince of Persia, (November 2003)
- Fate is Never Final.
- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. (November 30, 2004)
- I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
- Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address (20 January 1981).
- Eat, speak, and move, under the influence of the most received star; and though the devil lead the measure such are to be followed.
- William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act II, scene 1, line 56.
- My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Numean lion's nerve.- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 4, line 81.
- Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 221.
- O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolutions of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea!- William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act II, scene 1, line 45.
- What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act IV, scene 3, line 59.
- If thou read this, O Cæsar, thou mayst live;
If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.- William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act II, scene 3, line 15.
- Fates, we will know your pleasures:
That we shall die we know; 'tis but the time
And drawing days out, that men stand upon.- William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act III, scene 1, line 98.
- What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid within an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us?- William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 3, line 127.
- But yet I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live.- William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 1, line 83.
- But, O vain boast!
Who can control his fate?- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act V, scene 2, line 264.
- You fools! I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate; the elements
Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that's in my plume.- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act III, scene 3, line 60.
- Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be, and be this so.- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act I, scene 5, line 329.
- As the old hermit of Prague … said,… "That that is, is."
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act IV, scene 2. (Referring to Jerome, called "The Hermit of Camaldoli," in Tuscany).
- Let me tell you about my fate: it is an insult. Let me explain it to you: it is a disgrace.
Were I to tell my neighbour about my fate, he would heap insults upon me.
I looked into the water. My destiny was drifting past. I was born on an ill-fated day.
- Fate is a dog, well able to bite.
- Fate is a raging storm blowing over the Land.
- A pig which was about to be slaughtered by the pig-butcher squealed. (The butcher said:) "Your ancestors and forebears walked this road, and now you too are walking it, so why are you squealing?"
- Fate is a wet bank; it can make one slip.
- Šuruppak, Instructions of Shuruppak (3rd millennium BC).
- Human effort can be used for self-betterment and that there is no such thing as an external fate imposed by the gods.
- Yoga Vasistha (Vasistha teaching Rama), tr: Christopher Chapple, 1984, pp. x-xi with footnote 4
- Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.
- 'Endure the hardships of your present state,
Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate. - Virgil, Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book I, line 207. (trans. John Dryden).
- 'Endure the hardships of your present state,
- Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta
Jam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur.- Live and be blest! 'tis sweet to feel
Fate's book is closed and under seal.
For us, alas! that volume stern
Has many another page to turn. - Virgil, Aeneid, III, 493 (trans. John Conington).
- Live and be blest! 'tis sweet to feel
- The Oracle: You're going to have to make a choice. In the one hand you'll have Morpheus' life and in the other hand you'll have your own. One of you is going to die. Which one will be up to you. I'm sorry, kiddo, I really am. You have a good soul, and I hate giving good people bad news. Oh, don't worry about it. As soon as you step outside that door, you'll start feeling better. You'll remember you don't believe in any of this fate crap. You're in control of your own life, remember? Here, take a cookie. I promise, by the time you're done eating it, you'll feel right as rain.
- The Matrix, written by Andrew and Lana Wachowski (1999)
- Wyrd bið ful aræd.
- Fate remains wholly inexorable.
- Anonymous 10th century author of The Wanderer.
- Fate remains wholly inexorable.
- GaeS a wyrd swa hio scel.
- Fate goes ever as it must.
- Beowulf, line 455.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 261-65.
- The bow is bent, the arrow flies,
The wingéd shaft of fate.- Ira Aldridge, On William Tell, Stanza 12.
- Yet who shall shut out Fate?
- Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia (1879), Book III, line 336.
- Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?
- Bishop Joseph Butler, Human Nature and Other Sermons "Sermon VII: On the Character of Balaam", last paragraph.
- 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.- Lord Byron, To Thomas Moore, Stanza 2.
- To bear is to conquer our fate.
- Thomas Campbell, On Visiting a Scene in Argyleshire.
- Le vin est versé, il faut le boire.
- The wine is poured, you should drink it.
- Attributed to M. de Charost. Spoken to Louis XIV, at the siege of Douai, as the king attempted to retire from the firing line.
- Tolluntur in altum
Ut lapsu graviore ruant.- They are raised on high that they may be dashed to pieces with a greater fall.
- Claudian, In Rufinum, Book I. 22.
- All human things are subject to decay,
And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.- John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe, line 1.
- 'Tis Fate that flings the dice,
And as she flings
Of kings makes peasants,
And of peasants kings.- John Dryden, Works, Volume XV, p. 103. Ed. 1821.
- Stern fate and time
Will have their victims; and the best die first,
Leaving the bad still strong, though past their prime,
To curse the hopeless world they ever curs'd,
Vaunting vile deeds, and vainest of the worst.- Ebenezer Elliott, The Village Patriarch, Book IV, Part IV.
- On est, quand on veut, maître de son sort.
- We are, when we will it, masters of our own fate.
- Louis Ferrier, Adraste.
- One common fate we both must prove;
You die with envy, I with love.- John Gay, Fable, The Poet and Rose, line 29.
- Du musst (herrschen und gewinnen,
Oder dienen und verlieren,
Leiden oder triumphiren),
Amboss oder Hammer sein.- Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Grosscophta, II.
- Der Mensch erfährt, er sei auch wer er mag,
Ein letztes Glück und einen letzten Tag.- Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sprüche in Reimen, III.
- Each curs'd his fate that thus their project cross'd;
How hard their lot who neither won nor lost.- Robert Graves, An Incident in High Life.
- Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.- Thomas Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
- Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.
- Robert Greene, Perimedes the Blacksmith.
- Why doth IT so and so, and ever so,
This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?- Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, Fore Scene, Spirit of the Pities.
- 'Tis writ on Paradise's gate,
"Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!"
- ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
- Character is destiny.
- Heraclitus Fragment 119
- Variant translations:
Character is fate.
Man's character is his fate.
A man's character is his fate.
A man's character is his guardian divinity.
One's bearing shapes one's fate.
- Toil is the lot of all, and bitter woe
The fate of many.- Homer, The Iliad, Book XXI, line 646. Bryant's translation.
- Jove lifts the golden balances that show
The fates of mortal men, and things below.- Homer, The Iliad, Book XXII, line 271. Pope's translation.
- And not a man appears to tell their fate.
- Homer, The Odyssey, Book X, line 308. Pope's translation.
- With equal pace, impartial Fate
Knocks at the palace, as the cottage gate.- Horace, Carmina, I. 4. 17. Francis' translation.
- Sæpius ventis agitatur ingens
Pinus, et celsæ graviore casu
Decidunt terres feriuntque summos
Fulgura montes.- The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; high towers fall with a heavier crash; and the lightning strikes the highest mountain.
- Horace, Carmina, II. 10. 9. (Taken from Lucullus).
- East, to the dawn, or west or south or north!
Loose rein upon the neck of—and forth!- Richard Hovey, Faith and Fate.
- I do not know beneath what sky
Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;
I only know it shall be high,
I only know it shall be great.- Richard Hovey, Unmanifest Destiny.
- Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?- Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, line 345.
- Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.
- Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist p. 327
- Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers—
Forget-me-not,—the blue bell,—and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!- John Keats, Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds.
- The karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport".
- Jiddu Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master (1911)
- Just to save himself a few minutes' trouble, a man does not pay his workmen on the proper day, thinking nothing of the difficulties he brings upon them. So much suffering is caused just by carelessness — by forgetting to think how an action will affect others. But karma never forgets, and it takes no account of the fact that men forget.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master (1911)
- Fate holds the strings, and Men like children move
But as they're led: Success is from above.- Lord Lansdowne, Heroic Love, Act V, scene 1.
- Some things are fixed, some things are in flux. Pompeii is fixed.
- David Tennant as The Doctor Doctor Who, The Fires of Pompeii, written by James Morgan
- All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Builders, Stanza 1.
- No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1818), Stanza 8.
- A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round,
If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, translation of Friedrich von Logau, Sinnegedichte. Same idea in Luther, Table Talk. Hazlitt's translation. (1848).
- Kabira wept when he beheld the millstone roll,
Of that which passes 'twixt the stones, nought goes forth whole.- Prof. Eastwick's translation. of the Bag-o-Behar. (Garden and the Spring).
- In se magna ruunt: lætis hunc numina rebus
Crescendi posuere modum.- Mighty things haste to destruction: this limit have the gods assigned to human prosperity.
- Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, I. 81.
- Sed quo fata trahunt, virtus secura sequetur.
- Whither the fates lead virtue will follow without fear.
- Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, II. 287.
- Nulla vis humana vel virtus meruisse unquam potuit, ut, quod præscripsit fatalis ordo, non fiat.
- No power or virtue of man could ever have deserved that what has been fated should not have taken place.
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Historia, XXIII. 5.
- It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.- Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander, First Sestiad, line 167.
- Earth loves to gibber o'er her dross,
Her golden souls, to waste;
The cup she fills for her god-men
Is a bitter cup to taste.- Don Marquis, Wages.
- For him who fain would teach the world
The world holds hate in fee—
For Socrates, the hemlock cup;
For Christ, Gethsemane.- Don Marquis, Wages.
- He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.- Marquis of Montrose, My Dear and only Love. Reported in Napier's Memorials of Montrose as "That puts it not unto the touch/To win or lose it all".
- Nullo fata loco possis excludere.
- From no place can you exclude the fates.
- Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), IV. 60. 5.
- All the great things of life are swiftly done,
Creation, death, and love the double gate.
However much we dawdle in the sun
We have to hurry at the touch of Fate.- John Masefield, Widow in the Bye Street, Part II.
- And sing to those that hold the vital shears;
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.- John Milton, Arcades.
- Fixed, fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 560.
- Necessity and chance
Approach not me, and what I will is fate.- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VII, line 72.
- The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat, 71. Fitzgerald's translation. ("Thy piety" in first ed.).
- Big with the fate of Rome.
- Thomas Otway, Youth Preserved, Act III, scene 1.
- Geminos, horoscope, varo Producis genio.
- O natal star, thou producest twins of widely different character.
- Persius, Satires, VI. 18.
- "Thou shalt see me at Philippi," was the remark of the spectre which appeared to Brutus in his tent at Abydos [B.C. 42]. Brutus answered boldly: "I will meet thee there." At Philippi the spectre reappeared, and Brutus, after being defeated, died upon his own sword.
- Plutarch, Life of Cæsar. Life of Marcus Brutus.
- But blind to former as to future fate,
What mortal knows his pre-existent state?- Alexander Pope, Dunciad, Book III, line 47.
- Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.
- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 77.
- A brave man struggling in the storms of fate.
- Alexander Pope, Prologue to Addison's Cato.
- As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.
- Proverbs, XXVI. 2.
- He putteth down one and setteth up another.
- Psalms. LXXV. 7.
- Fate sits on these dark battlements, and frowns;
And as the portals open to receive me,
Her voice, in sullen echoes, through the courts,
Tells of a nameless deed.- Ann Radcliffe, The Motto to "The Mysteries of Udolpho".
- I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
- Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural address (January 20, 1981).
- Sæpe calamitas solatium est nosse sortem suam.
- It is often a comfort in misfortune to know our own fate.
- Quintus Curtius Rufus, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, IV. 10. 27.
- Der Zug des Herzens ist des Schicksals Stimme.
- The heart's impulse is the voice of fate.
- Friedrich Schiller, Piccolomini, III. 8. 82.
- Mach deine Rechnung mit dem Himmel, Vogt!
Fort musst du, deine Uhr ist abgelaufen.- Make thine account with Heaven, governor,
Thou must away, thy sand is run. - Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, IV. 3. 7.
- Make thine account with Heaven, governor,
- Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt.
- The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, CVII.
- Multi ad fatum
Venere suum dum fata timent.- Many have reached their fate while dreading fate.
- Seneca the Younger, Œdipus, 993.
- Nemo fit fato nocens.
- No one becomes guilty by fate.
- Seneca the Younger, Œdipus, 1,019.
- Yet what are they, the learned and the great?
Awhile of longer wonderment the theme!
Who shall presume to prophesy their date,
Where nought is certain save the uncertainty of fate?- Horace and James Smith, Rejected Addresses, By Lord Cui Bono.
- Two shall be born, the whole wide world apart,
And speak in different tongues, and have no thought
Each of the other's being; and have no heed;
And these, o'er unknown seas to unknown lands
Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;
And, all unconsciously, shape every act to this one end:
That one day out of darkness they shall meet
And read life's meanings in each other's eyes.- Susan M. Spaulding, Fate, in Wings of Icarus (1802). Falsely claimed by G. E. Edmundson.
- Jacta alea esto. (Jacta est alea.)
- Fate is a wet bank; it can make one slip.
- Šuruppak, Instructions of Shuruppak (3rd millennium BC).
- From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Garden of Proserpine.
- Sometimes an hour of Fate's serenest weather
Strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams;
Somewhere above us, in elusive ether,
Waits the fulfilment of our dearest dreams.- Bayard Taylor, Ad Amicos.
- Ad restim mihi quidem res rediit planissume.
- Nothing indeed remains for me but that I should hang myself.
- Terence, Phormio, IV. 4. 5.
- Quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur.
- Perge; decet. Forsan miseros meliora sequentur.
- Fata vocant.
- The fates call.
- Virgil, Georgics (c. 29 BC), IV. 496.
- I saw him even now going the way of all flesh.
- John Webster, Westward Ho, Act II, scene 2.
- "Ah me! what boots us all our boasted power,
Our golden treasure, and our purple state.
They cannot ward the inevitable hour,
Nor stay the fearful violence of fate."- Richard West, Monody on Queen Caroline.
- This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin.
- John Greenleaf Whittier, The Crisis, Stanza 10.
- Blindlings that er blos den Willen des Geschickes.
- Man blindly works the will of fate.
- Christoph Martin Wieland, Oberon, IV. 59.
- Des Schiksals Zwang ist bjtter.
- The compulsion of fate is bitter.
- Christoph Martin Wieland, Oberon, V. 60.
- My fearful trust "en vogant la galère." (Come what may.)
- Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Lover Prayeth Venus, Vogue la galée. See Molière, Tartuffe (1664), Act I, scene 1. Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XL. Rabelais, Gargantua, Book I, Chapter XX.
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