quotations about fate
Fate plays a role in many heroic legends. Oedipus must kill the Sphinx because the prize is the queen, his mother, whom he is fated to marry. The word "sphinx" in Greek, cognate with "sphincter," is from sphingo, meaning "I clutch" or "I strangle." She is herself a version of necessity, the tight outline that is the periphery of the universe. Like the Furies and other monsters embodying fate, the Sphinx is a mixed creature, in her case part woman, part lion. When Oedipus answers the riddle and destroys the monster, he thinks that he is liberating a foreign city called Thebes; but in fact, killing the fatal Sphinx allows him to go home, as heroes must--home to complete his fate. He had murdured his father "at the place where the three roads meet" -- the crossroads, the junction of choice. Having killed the obstructive stranger, his father, he had felt "free" -- to take the fatal road home, to encounter the Sphinx, and so to win his mother for his bride, as the Oracle of Apollo had foretold.
MARGARET VISSER
Beyond Fate
There are those who hold that there is a pattern to all that is said and done in this world, that no thing happens without reason nor out of time. As to that, I cannot speak, for I have seen too many threads cut short to believe it, but of a surety, I have seen too the weft of my fate shuttled on the loom. If there is a pattern, I do not think there is anyone among us who can stand at a great enough distance to discern it; yet I will not say that it is not so.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
The youth should be taught that he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate; that diligence is the mother of good luck; that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Fate isn't moral. Most people have the idea that they have the possibility to choose and have a free will. Ironically enough, these people only have the illusion that they can choose; in fact their future is already existing in their past.
ERIC DE VRIES
Hedge-Rider
Dread discovers fate, but when the individual would put his confidence in fate, dread turns about and takes fate away; for fate is like dread, and dread is like possibility ... a witch's letter.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
The Concept of Dread
Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and mortals--in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and character as well. It is everywhere bound or limitation. But Fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. For who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter? Man is not order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link in a chain, nor any ignominous baggage, but a stupendous antagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the Universe.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
All we can control in life is our own choices, how we choose to live and deal with what life has to offer. Everything else is fate.
MARK PURYEAR
The Nature of Asatru
The realm of fate is self-limited, and from every part the decree has gone forth that the realm of freedom shall not be invaded. Fate is one unit, freedom another unit. And there is nothing in the one element of nature that is in the other. There is a line, on the one side of which all is fate and on the other freedom, and neither can trespass upon the territory of the other. Man may utilize both for his good and for the glory of God.
H. H. MOORE
Methodist Review
One who says "Fate is directing me to do this" is brainless, and the goddess of fortune abandons him.
VANKATESANANDA
The Concise Yogi Vasistha
We must now be trained to do something we formerly assumed everyone would do simply by virtue of being human, being at one with an immemorial 'internal tradition': not identically, not correctly, but in one of the countless variations and moments, the 'give and take', whose dynamic interplay told the story and composed the spontaneous equilibrium of the commonweal, unplanned, unpremeditated, and 'unintentional'--just as the interaction of innumerable entities, elements and events composes the immense harmony, the perfection, of Nature: individually and collectively neither 'right' nor 'wrong', neither for better nor for worse, neither happy nor unhappy, neither 'correct' nor 'incorrect', neither 'progressive' nor 'reactionary', neither structured nor unstructured, neither wise nor foolish, but 'as it is', 'as things go', the Will of God, the fall of the dice, karma, Fate, the wheel of fortune, the Way. The Way that is beyond and prior to our judgments or discriminations or partisanships, the Way, the ancient Tao we once were, once saw, once recognized, once adored, as our own, our Self.
MARTY GLASS
Yuga
Believing in fate has probably always arisen in part because of the delights and terrors of storytelling. We have to realize--to learn--that in life we are not the readers but the authors of our own narratives.
MARGARET VISSER
Beyond Fate
Thy fate is like to his who glared, in mirth,
A meteor of wrath and power unblest,
Purging, perchance, some grossness from the earth,
But trenching with deep thunder-scars her breast.
WILLIAM BALL
Creation
Fate is a manifestation of natural causes. That’s it. It’s not a conscious entity. It has no plan.
WALTER WYKES
The Fly
People often think that their individual fate is everything. How wrong we are! It is enough to contemplate the invisible to know how much there is that is greater than fate. Yes, close your eyes, you will see what light renders invisible. You will see the little shadow in the shadow. You will see the signature from beyond. Listen to that fountain; don't you see every tiny drop of water sparkling in the dark? There is meaning.
HUGUES DE MONTALEMBERT
Invisible: A Memoir
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
JOHN DRYDEN
Mac Flecknoe
Struggling against your fate is like wrestling the wind.
FRANCINE RIVERS
Unveiled: Tamar
Fate is not itself our metaphysical fate, but an opening choice; we can ... turn the account into freedom.
STANLEY CAVELL
Contesting Tears
One could not know where it was that one had taken the path one was upon but only that one was upon it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
Fate and victory shift ... now this way, now that way -- like a line of unarmored men under a hail of enemy arrows.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time.
JAMES LEVINE
The Blue Notebook