Fate Quotes - Page 21

• I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

  Saul Bellow

  Character, Men, Doors

  1953 The Adventures of Augie March.

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• I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.

  Katherine Paterson

  Katherine Paterson (2003). “Preacher's Boy”, p.11, Oxford University Press, USA

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• when fate is very generous with us, there is always a well into which all our dreams can tumble.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Wells, Generous

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• You imagine that there's no use struggling against fate, that she will always have her way, no matter what we do. But don't you see? It's our very efforts to cheat fate, or to change it, that make things come to pass in the way they were meant to.

  Gary L. Blackwood

  Struggle, Effort, Use

  Gary L. Blackwood (2003). “Shakespeare's Spy”, Dutton Childrens Books

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• I am the god Apostolos. The Harbinger of Telikos. The Final Fate of all. Beloved son of Apollymi the Great Destroyer. My will makes the will of the universe. [Apostolos / Acheron Parthenopaeus]

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Son, Finals, Beloved

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• Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you. And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am? The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life-- A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you, Death and the strong force of fate are waiting. There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon When a man will take my life in battle too-- flinging a spear perhaps Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.

  Homer

  Mother, Strong, Powerful

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• ... the human body is much stronger than we think. It seems to laugh at the cobwebs of despair that the heart weaves before our eyes in order to blind us to our fate. The body walks and goes on walking.

  Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry

  Heart, Eye, Thinking

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• One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow. Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go. Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate, As we voyage along through the life: Tis the set of a soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Life, Blow, Wind

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “The Winds Of Fate”

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• A child should never even think about being a "good son." A parent decides that fate for the child. The parent encourages that. Not the child himself. And the "perfect dad"? I shudder at thinking what that may be.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Children, Dad, Son

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• What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.

  Aldous Huxley

  College, Expression, Practice

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• Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.

  Sigrid Undset

  Men, Given

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• Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fear, Real, Believe

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• What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

  George Eliot

  Self, Deception, Capacity

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• And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.

  Anne Rice

  Pain, Grief, Giving

  Anne Rice (2011). “New Tales of the Vampires: includes Pandora and Vittorio the Vampire”, p.106, Ballantine Books

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• Fate does not seek our consent.

  Terry Goodkind

  Doe, Consent

  Terry Goodkind (2015). “Blood Of The Fold”, p.301, Head of Zeus

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• Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.

  Philip Pullman

  Eyebrows, Rage, Raises

  Philip Pullman (2007). “The subtle knife”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• There was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Would Be, Persevere

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “The Way We Live Now”, p.63, Anthony Trollope

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• No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Hands, Events, Fabric

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Wind, Trying

  "A Hat Full of Sky". Book by Terry Pratchett, 2004.

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• If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Laughing, Shantaram, Jokes

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.151, Macmillan

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• In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Art, Book, Thinking

  "Books hold no passport – Carlos Ruiz Zafón discusses The Shadow of the Wind". Interview with Steve Porter, www.threemonkeysonline.com.

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• History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

  Winston Churchill

  Memories, Passion, Past

  Winston Churchill, David Cannadine (1989). “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Revenge, Heart, Together Again

  Kate DiCamillo (2009). “The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread”, p.116, Candlewick Press

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• This day's black fate on more days doth depend; This but begins the woe, others must end.

  William Shakespeare

  Black, Woe, Juliet

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1809). “The plays of William Shakespeare ...: With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators”, p.303

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• Not even need and love can defeat fate.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  And Love, Needs, Defeat

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Lavinia”, p.55, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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