“Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen.”
Book III. ch. 12.
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)
“To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.”
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Arthur Schopenhauer 261
German philosopher 1788–1860Related quotes
“Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate.
Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850–1919) American author and poet
Three Things.
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)
Context: Divine the Powers that on this trio wait.
Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate.
Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great.
“The leader is always alone before bad fates.”
Charles de Gaulle
(1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic
Toujours le chef est seul en face du mauvais destin.
in Mémoires de guerre.
Writings
“It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no eminence can escape; it was the grievous collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her own greatness.”
Invida fatorum series summisque negatum<br/>stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus<br/>nec se Roma ferens.
Invida fatorum series summisque negatum
stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus
nec se Roma ferens.
Book I, line 70 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia
Nikolai Berdyaev
(1874–1948) Russian philosopher
the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 32
Paul Valéry
(1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 156
“All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time.”
The Builders.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
(1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works
Letter to his publisher (31 July 1947); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), Letter 109
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 17, The Strange Man's Strange Tale