Quotes about destiny

A collection of quotes on the topic of fate.

„Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.“

— Haruki Murakami, book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

„Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.“

— George Orwell, book Politics and the English Language

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Appearance, Truth

„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.“

— Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher 1788 - 1860

Time, Evil

„Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.“

— Ed Warren American paranormal investigator, demonologist, exorcist, ghost hunter 1926 - 2006

People, God

„O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.“

— Albert Camus French author and journalist 1913 - 1960

Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116

Cry, Summer, Winter, Light

„We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.“

— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Animals, Time, Sense, World

„And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you—
it's born with us the day that we are born.“

— Homér, Iliad

VI. 488–489 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Original: (el) Μοῖραν δ' οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται.

„Dreams are like stars; you may never touch them, but if you follow them, they will lead you to your destiny.“

— Liam Payne English singer and songwriter 1993

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422617.Liam_Payne

Star, Dreams

„Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.“

— Kate DiCamillo American children's writer 1964

Source: Despereaux = Tale of Despereaux

„Time is the architect of fate,
fleeting omen, pure phantom
in enchanting light of absence,
and our life the play of love and death,
only love will never die,
because In love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
only the blossom of sacred unity.“

— Alexis Karpouzos 1967

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Making love, Life, Love, Light

„Life is too short to pursue every human act to its most remote consequences; "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost" is a commentary on fate, not the statement of a major cause of action against a blacksmith.“

— Antonin Scalia former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1936 - 2016

Holmes v.SIPC, 503 U.S. 258 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/503/258.html#286 (1991) (concurring).
1990s

Life