Fate

"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."

"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."

"The heart is its own Fate."

"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"

"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."

"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?"

"There is no fate but what we make."

"Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat."

"Many things happen between the cup and the lip."

"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."

"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."

"Fate is created, not ordained."

"Fate was turning a page in her Book of Delusions."

"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."

"Le sort fait les parents, la choix fait les amis."

"He has gone to the demnition bow-wows."

"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."

"People are the pawns of fate."

"Marty, the future isn't written. It can be changed. You know that. Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be."

"How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"'Tis strange how the heart can create Or colour from itself its fate; We make ourselves our own distress, We are ourselves our happiness."

"All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme."

"Everything is preordained. Even my responses."

"We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us."

"So long as it fated, fate didn’t care what it fated."

"Fool, don't you know you cannot change your fate."

"Fate is Never Final."

"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."

"Eat, speak, and move, under the influence of the most received star; and though the devil lead the measure such are to be followed."

"My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Numean lion's nerve."

"Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."

"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!"

"What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide."

"If thou read this, O Cæsar, thou mayst live; If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive."

"Fates, we will know your pleasures: That we shall die we know; 'tis but the time And drawing days out, that men stand upon."

"What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid within an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us?"

"But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live."

"But, O vain boast! Who can control his fate?"

"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."

"Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe; What is decreed must be, and be this so."

"As the old hermit of Prague … said,… "That that is, is.""

"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."

"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."