“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

—  Jean De La Fontaine

Source: Fables

Last update Oct. 23, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." by Jean De La Fontaine?
Jean De La Fontaine photo
Jean De La Fontaine 47
French poet, fabulist and writer. 1621–1695

Related quotes

Goldie Hawn photo

“You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.
Ayn Rand photo

“He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

The Measures of Man (1959)
1950s

Norman Mailer photo

“He had a personality that was hopeless. He had a profound distrust of people's possibilities, and it came out in his personality. … There was an almost indecent pleasure he took in being sentimental about all the worst things.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On Richard Nixon
Interview for French TV (1998)

Jeffrey Archer photo

“You can often judge the character of a person by the way he treats his fellow men.”

Jeffrey Archer book Only Time Will Tell

Source: Only Time Will Tell

Georg Brandes photo

“For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.””

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 38-39

“We cannot refuse destiny. We can't avoid it either. There is no place for us to hide. Whichever path you choose, he will find you.”

Titon Rahmawan

#Destiny

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

On rencontre sa destinée
Souvent par des chemins qu’on prend pour l’éviter.
Book VIII (1678–1679), fable 16 (The Horoscope)
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Arthur Miller photo

“A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Deputy Governor Danforth
The Crucible (1953)
Context: A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time — we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.

Related topics