Quotes about destiny

A collection of quotes on the topic of fate, life, use, man.

Best quotes about destiny

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“We make our own fortunes and we call them fate.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

“People usually blame themselves or “fate.””

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

However, when two cars collide at an intersection, should we blame the individual drivers, “fate,” or the way transportation is engineered so that it permits collisions in the first place?
Designing the Future (2007)

“Fate is written in the face.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

“Within the child lies the fate of the future.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

“We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“Coincidences are the scars of fate.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

“If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Quotes about destiny

“Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Hate, Children, Truth, Dreams

“To turn away from the enemy is cowardice. Misfortune is the fate of the enemy.”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

When he learned that the Crusaders had come toward him Source: Ahmet Akgündüz - Mehmed's tolerance http://www.ahmetakyol.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9849&Itemid=47

“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 (1888–1968) American writer

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.

Life, World, Sense, Time

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Love, People, Heart

“You don't find love, it finds you. It's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Star

“The people think of wealth and power as the greatest fate,
But in this world a spell of health is the best state.
What men call sovereignty is a worldly strife and constant war;
Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest of all estates.”

Suleiman (1494–1566) Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

Mansel, Philip, Constantinople: city of the world's desire 1453-1924 (1995), p. 84
Poetry

Men, God, War, People

“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

Death, Imagination, Sense, Change

“Since I won't let the critics seal my fate, they
keep hollering I'm full of hate.
But they don't really hurt me none, 'cause
I'm doing good and having fun.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

"Still the Greatest", p. 109
The Soul of a Butterfly (2004)

Hate, Hurt

“To turn away from the enemy is cowardice. Misfortune is the fate of the enemy.
( When he learned that the Crusaders had come toward him )”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

Learning

“We cannot rest while Brazilians are going hungry, while families are living in the streets, while poor children are abandoned to their own fates and while crack and crack dens rule.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

First speech http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/dilma-rousseff-wins-brazil-president after being elected President, October 31. 2010

Children, Family

“If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Songs of the Soul (1971)

Life, Failure, Success, Joy

“People say I'm strange that way,
'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate
For the childhood I've never known.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Childhood
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

Love, People, Way, Childhood

“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/

Time, Death, Light, Love

“I warn you, Eragon, beware of whom you fall in love with, for fate seems to have a morbid interest in our family.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Love, Family

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Fight

“The Stoics also teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind and Fate and Jupiter, and by many other names besides.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Zeno, 68.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 7: The Stoics

God

“On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves.”

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900–1986) Bulgarian philosopher

The Yoga of Nutrition, Editions Prosveta, 2012 ebook edition, pp. 24 https://books.google.it/books?id=jnoVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24-25.

Men, War, World, Peace

“The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 387

Life, Family, Religion, Home

“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)

“On Monday the 9th of the first Jumada, we got out of the suburbs of Agra, on our journey (safar) for the Holy War, and dismounted in the open country, where we remained three or four days to collect our army and be its rallying-point…On this occasion I received a secret inspiration and heard an infallible voice say: 'Is not the time yet come unto those who believe, that their hearts should humbly submit to the admonition of Allah, and that truth which hath been revealed? Thereupon we set ourselves to extirpate the things of wickedness…
Above all, adequate thanks cannot be rendered for a benefit than which none is greater in the world and nothing is more blessed, in the world to come, to wit, victory over most powerful infidels and dominion over wealthiest heretics, these are the unbelievers, the wicked.'In the eyes of the judicious, no blessing can be greater than this…. Previous to the rising in Hindustan of the Sun of dominion and the emergence there of the light of the Shahansha's (i. e. Babur's) Khalifate the authority of that execrated pagan (Sanga) - at the Judgment Day he shall have no friend - was such that not one of all the exalted sovereigns of this wide realm, such as the Sultan of Delhi, the Sultan of Gujarat and the Sultan of Mandu, could cope with this evil-dispositioned one, without the help of other pagans…
Ten powerful chiefs, each the leader of a pagan host, uprose in rebellion, as smoke rises, and linked themselves, as though enchained, to that perverse one (Sanga); and this infidel decade who, unlike the blessed ten, uplifted misery-freighted standards which denounce unto them excruciating punishment, had many dependents, and troops, and wide-extended lands…. The protagonists of the royal forces fell, like divine destiny, on that one-eyed Dajjal who to understanding men, shewed the truth of the saying, When Fate arrives, the eye becomes blind, and setting before their eyes the scripture which saith, whosoever striveth to promote the true religion, striveth for the good of his own soul, they acted on the precept to which obedience is due, Fight against infidels and hypocrites…
The pagan right wing made repeated and desperate attack on the left wing of the army of Islam, falling furiously on the holy warriors, possessors of salvation, but each time was made to turn back or, smitten with the arrows of victory, was made to descend into Hell, the house of perdition: they shall be thrown to bum therein, and an unhappy dwelling shall it be. Then the trusty amongst the nobles, Mumin Ataka and Rustam Turkman betook themselves to the rear of the host of darkened pagans…
At the moment when the holy warriors were heedlessly flinging away their lives, they heard a secret voice say, Be not dismayed, neither be grieved, for, if ye believe, ye shall be exalted above the unbelievers, and from the infallible Informer heard the joyful words, Assistance is from Allah, and a speedy victory! And do thou bear glad tiding to true believers. Then they fought with such delight that the plaudits of the saints of the Holy Assembly reached them and the angels from near the Throne, fluttered round their heads like moths.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur writing about the battle against the Rajput Confederacy led by Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar. In Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 547-572.

Men, War, Truth, Secret

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Life, Way, Suffering

“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.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

The third and fourth sentences are a paraphrase of a sentence by G. K. Chesterton: "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act." Generally Speaking, "On Holland' (1928).
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: It is time for us to realize that we're too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. 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. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.

“When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Variant: What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.

Appearance

“I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

“Just because Fate doesn't deal you the right cards, it doesn't mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

“If you don't like the hand that fate's dealt you, fight for a new one.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Fight

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Life

“As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Gonzo

Support

“SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IN FATE, OTHERS DON’T. I DO, and I don’t. It may seem at times as if invisible fingers move us about like puppets on strings. But for sure, we are not born to be dragged along. We can grab the strings ourselves and adjust our course at every crossroad, or take off at any little trail into the unknown.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

Source: Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft

People, Time

“Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Beauty, Peaceful, Nature

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 67 in the 1959 Beacon Press edition

Life, Death, Suffering, Parting

“Life is in Fate's hands now. You made your choice to stay… it's too late to change that, so stop agonizing over it…. You're making my scales itch.

Saphira, from "Eragon”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Life, Change

“More money means litigating, more player-hating. Got a cell at the pen, for me waiting. Is this my fate?”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Hold Ya Head" https://play.google.com/music/preview/Te5ppuyfquh4t6lnlla3zs6w33e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics 1990s, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996)

Money, Hate, Waiting

“My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates… that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable."”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Politics, society and humanity

People, Way, Idea, Anger

“We do not hesitate to help and support the brother, the ill-fated friend or the needy wherever they are. This is our message to the world, and this is the United Arab Emirates.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quotes on Philanthropy, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=99c18960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.

World, Support, Help

“Fate presented itself to some like a chinese fan--one side black, the other side gilded with flowers.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Noli me Tangere

Flowers

“One minute decides the outcome of a battle, one hour the success of a campaign, one day the fate of empires.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

other version: One minute can decide the outcome of the battle, one hour - the outcome of the campaign, and one day - the fate of the country.
"Encyclopedia of Russian History" - Page 1504 by James R. Millar - Soviet Union - 2004.

Success

“Let a man be of good cheer about his soul, who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has followed after the pleasures of knowledge in this life; who has adorned the soul in her own proper jewels, which are temperance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth—in these arrayed she is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her time comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or other. Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Men, Pleasure, Truth

“Fate suggests submission to the circumstances of life; destiny suggests active engagement. The former implies some all-powerful force or figure to whose will we must submit. The latter implies that each of us is a manifestation of one of the infinite aspects of creation, whose fullest expression depends in some small but necessary way on our day-to-day, moment-to-moment decisions.”

Fenton Johnson (1953) American novelist

"Going it alone" (2015)

Life, Way, Decision, Dependency

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Life, Death, Men, Nature

“If I knew that it was fated for me to be sick, I would even wish for it; for the foot also, if it had intelligence, would volunteer to get muddy.”

Chrysippus (-281–-208 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

As quoted by Epictetus, Discourses, ii. 6. 10.

Intelligence

“What a man sacrifices in struggling for his Volk, a woman sacrifices in struggling to preserve this Volk in individual cases. What a man gives in heroic courage on the battlefield, woman gives in eternally patient devotion, in eternally patient suffering and endurance. Every child to which she gives birth is a battle which she wages in her Volk’s fateful question of to be or not to be.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech from the Sixth Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg (September 8th, 1934), quoted in Hitler: speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945 - Volume 2 - Page 533 https://books.google.com/books?id=a9dVAAAAYAAJ&q=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&dq=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8id_w8-TWAhXIRSYKHSn5CV0Q6AEILDAB 1930s

Birth, Courage, Question, Suffering

“Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

As quoted in The 48 Laws of Power (2000) by Robert Greene, p. 33

“You take an oath to a man whom you know follows the laws of providence, which he obeys independently of the influence of earthly powers, who leads the German people rightly, and who will guide Germany's fate. Through your oath you bind yourselves to a man who — that is our faith — was sent to us by higher powers. Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!”

Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) German Nazi leader

"The Oath to Adolf Hitler" (1934)

People, Faith, Law, Heart

“I would hate to be accused of having got through life just by luck - I think you do create your own destiny. My mum and Dad believe in fate. I see coincidences but not a predestined pattern. If it's just about fate, then you become complacent and expect things to come your way. I like being challenged. Even when you're doing really intense, dramatic scenes that take so much out of you it's still really fun and energizing. Acting makes you feel so alive.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

The Guardian - October 11, 2006 http://www.danradcliffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=28

Life, Hate, Way, Feeling

“Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 7

“A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone; attend to those things, which you think are important. You may adopt all policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. All your books are going to be judged, praised or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands. So it might be well to pay him some attention.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

The origins of this quote are unknown. At least two sources can be traced back, but these sources date back to the 1940 years; long time after Lincon's death. Source 1: The 2003 "Masonic Historiology" from Allotter J. McKowe contains on page 55 (page 55 is dated on Jan. 11, 1944) the poem " What Is a Boy? http://books.google.de/books?id=K5CHWRttt-gC&pg=PA55&dq=desk" from an unknown author. The poem reads: :: He is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. :: He is to sit right where you are sitting and attend when you are gone to those things you think are so important. :: You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they will be carried out depends on him. :: Even if you make leagues and treaties, he will have to manage them. :: He is going to sit at your desk in the Senate, and occupy your place on the Supreme Bench. :: He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. :: He is going to move in and take over your prisons, churches, schools, universities and corporations. :: All your work is going to be judged and praised or condemned by him. :: Your reputation and your future are in his hands. :: All you work is for him, and the fate of the nations and of humanity is in his hands. Quotes about life http://www.quotesaboutlifee.com/2012/04/best-quotes-on-life-best-sayings-on.html :: So it might be well to pay him some attention. Source 2: The newspaper "The Florence Times" from Florence, Alabama (Volume 72 - Number 120) contains in its Wednesday afternoon edition from October 30, 1940 a statement from a Dr. Frank Crane. The entitled "What is a Boy?" statement http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19401030&id=yx8sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I7oEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3738,3720511 reads: Disputed

Books, Thinking, Dependency, Personality

“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.”

Henry Beston book The Outermost House

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2

Time, Nature, Universe, Animals

“No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Support

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”

Sun Tzu book The Art of War

(zh-TW) 微乎微乎，至於無形；神乎神乎，至於無聲；故能為敵之司命。
Alternative translation: Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible. Thus he is master of his enemy's fate.
Alternative translation: O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
The Art of War, Chapter VI · Weaknesses and Strengths

“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 (1788–1860) German philosopher

Evil, Time

“then the voice in my head said

WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE

OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS
REVOLT AGAINST IT

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE”

Frank Bidart (1939) American poet

Source: In the Western Night: Collected Poems, 1965-1990

Love

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. 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

Source: The Iliad

Death

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Men, God

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life, Death, World, Confidence

“Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Fear, Appearance, Animals

“Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are; struggle against it and you'll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it. and you'll survive”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“what cannot be saved when fate takes, patience her injury a mockery makes”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Patience

“Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant… The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

World, Dependency

“Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Life, Fools

“Its a beautiful woman's fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Beauty

“No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Life, Law, Laughter, Time

“All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Builders

The Builders.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Time

“I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/ The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) Context: I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My county is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

Love, Hate, Fight

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Change

“I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Feeling

“Fate can be one mean god at times.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

God, Time

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Books, Disease

“You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn't make the world this way. We do.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

God, World, Dogs, Way

“Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.”

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) Norwegian writer

Source: The Wife

“He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Death, Wisdom, Fear, Hope

“Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“What will be will be. No one can escape fate's design.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

“The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Death, People, Fear

“Pluck up your hearts, since fate still rests our friend.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Aeneas, Act I, scene i, line 149
Dido (c. 1586)

Heart

“The genius continually discovers fate, and the more profound the genius, the more profound the discovery of fate. To spiritlessness, this is naturally foolishness, but in actuality it is greatness, because no man is born with the idea of providence, and those who think that one acquires it gradually though education are greatly mistaken, although I do not thereby deny the significance of education. Not until sin is reached is providence posited. Therefore the genius has an enormous struggle to reach providence. If he does not reach it, truly he becomes a subject for the study of fate. The genius is an omnipotent Ansich [in itself] which as such would rock the whole world. For the sake of order, another figure appears along with him, namely fate. Fate is nothing. It is the genius himself who discovers it, and the more profound the genius, the more profoundly he discovers fate, because that figure is merely the anticipation of providence. If he continues to be merely a genius and turns outward, he will accomplish astonishing things; nevertheless, he will always succumb to fate, if not outwardly, so that it is tangible and visible to all, then inwardly. Therefore, a genius-existence is always like a fairy tale if in the deepest sense the genius does not turn inward into himself. The genius is able to do all things, and yet he is dependent upon an insignificance that no one comprehends, an insignificance upon which the genius himself by his omnipotence bestows omnipotent significance. Therefore, a second lieutenant, if he is a genius, is able to become an emperor and change the world, so that there becomes one empire and one emperor. But therefore, too, the army may be drawn up for battle, the conditions for the battle absolutely favorable, and yet in the next moment wasted; a kingdom of heroes may plead that the order for battle be given-but he cannot; he must wait for the fourteenth of June. And why? Because that was the date of the battle of Marengo. So all things may be in readiness, he himself stands before the legions, waiting only for the sun to rise in order to announce the time for the oration that will electrify the soldiers, and the sun may rise more glorious than ever, an inspiring and inflaming sight for all, only not for him, because the sun did not rise as glorious as this at Austerlitz, and only the sun of Austerlitz gives victory and inspiration. Thus, the inexplicable passion with which such a one may often rage against an entirely insignificant man, when otherwise he may show humanity and kindness even toward his enemies. Yes, woe unto the man, woe unto the woman, woe unto the innocent child, woe unto the beast of the field, woe unto the bird whose flight, woe unto the tree whose branch comes in his way at the moment he is to interpret his omen.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 98-100 (1844)
About

World, Education, Way, Idea

“The main dimensions of Marx’s discussion of alienation are as follows: …
1. The worker … has no power to determine the fate of what he produces. …
2. The work task does not offer intrinsic satisfactions. …
3. Human relations, in capitalism, tend to become reduced to operations of the market. … Money promotes the rationalization of social relationships, since it provides an abstract standard in terms of which the most heterogeneous qualities can be compared, and reduced, to one another. …
4. Some animals do produce, of course, but only in a mechanical, adaptive fashion. Alienated labor reduces human productive activity to the level of adaptation to, rather than active mastery of, nature.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 12-13.

Money, Fashion, Nature, Animals

“Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle…”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Motivation, Nature, Suffering

“Life and experience. If one notices how some individuals know how to treat their experiences (their insignificant everyday experiences) so that these become a plot of ground that bears fruit three times a year; while others (and how many of them!) are driven through the waves of the most exciting turns of fate, of the most varied currents of their time or nation, and yet always stay lightly on the surface, like cork: then one is finally tempted to divide mankind into a minority (minimality) of those people who know how to make much out of little and a majority of those who know how to make a little out of much; indeed, one meets those perverse wizards who, instead of creating the world out of nothing, create nothing out of the world.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 627
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Life, People, World, Time

“There is no Brahmin or Sudra (Backard Caste) or Pariah (the Untouchables) in England. In Russia you do not have Varnasrama (Casteism) dharma or fate.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 486.
Untouchability

“Now through the vagaries of fortune, most of these 10.3 million Jews remained alive, so I say to myself: fate wished it so. I have to subordinate myself to fate and destiny. I am just a little man and don't have to fight against this, and I couldn't, and I don't want to.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

Fight

“You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.”

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

Evil, Time

“The overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is identical with that well-known image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. This is the motherlove which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, 'oyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being-so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness-who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater nature and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

Love, Life, Children, Secret

“Before he died, Guru Govind Singh had commissioned Banda Bairagi, a Rajput from Jammu to go to the Punjab and punish the wrong-doers. Banda more than fulfilled his mission. He was joined by fresh formations of the Khalsa and the Hindus at large gave him succour and support. He roamed all over the Punjab, defeating one Muslim army after another in frontal fights as well as in guerilla warfare. Sirhind, where Guru Govind Singh's younger sons had been walled up, was stormed and sacked. The bullies of Islam who had walked with immense swagger till only the other day had to run for cover. Large parts of the Punjab were liberated from Muslim despotism after a spell of nearly seven centuries. The Mughal empire, however, was still a mighty edifice which could mobilize a military force far beyond Banda's capacity to match. Gradually, he had to yield ground and accept defeat as his own following thinned down in battle after battle. He was captured, carried to Delhi in an iron cage and tortured to death in 1716 A. D. Many other members of the Khalsa met the same fate in Delhi and elsewhere. The Muslim governor of the Punjab had placed a prize on every Khalsa head. The ranks of the Khalsa had perforce to suffer a steep decline and go into hiding.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Swarup, Ram, & Goel, S. R. (1985). Hindu-Sikh relationship. (Introduction by S.R. Goel)

Death, Support, Suffering, Fight

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men, Secret, World, Dogs

“But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle...”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Disease, Motivation, Hell, Nature

“If you know how to launch your ship into God's sea
Oh, what a blessed fate, submerged in it to be”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

God, Sea

“The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama and Mrs. Obama in Town Hall with Youth of Northern Ireland, Belfast Waterfront, Belfast, Northern Ireland (17 June 2013)
2013

Peace

“The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe. …we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.”

Stephen Hawking book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time

with G.F.R. Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" (1973) Preface

Books, Star, Sense, Universe

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, World

“There is no God-Creator, but there is the Cosmos, which creates suns, planets and living beings. There is no omnipotent God, but there is the Universe, which governs the fates of all celestial bodies and their inhabitants. There are no sons of God, but there are mature and thus rational and perfect sons of the Cosmos. There are no personal gods, but there are elected leaders of planets, solar systems, stellar groups, milky ways, islands of ether and the whole Cosmos. There is no Christ, but there is a brilliant man and a greater teacher of mankind.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

Нет бога-творца, но есть космос, производящий солнца, планеты и живых существ. Hет всемогущего бога, но есть вселенная, которая распоряжается судьбой всех небесных тел и их жителей. Нет сынов божьих, но есть зрелые и потому разумные и совершенные сыны космоса. Нет личных богов, но есть избранные правители: планет, солнечных систем, звёздных групп, млечных путей, эфирных островов и всего космоса. Нет Христа, но есть гениальный человек, великий учитель человечества.
from Нет ничего (Мысли безбожника) [There is nothing (Atheist's thoughts)], quoted in Л.В. Шапошникова, Вестники космической эволюции.

God, Way, Teachers, Universe

“It is better to be a live jackal than a dead lion--for jackals, not men. Men who have the moral courage to fight intelligently for freedom have the best prospects of avoiding the fate of both live jackals and dead lions. Survival is not the be-all and end-all of a life worthy of man. Sometimes the worst we can know about a man is that he has survived. Those who say life is worth living at any price have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they will not betray to stay alive. Man's vocation should be the use of the arts of intelligence in behalf of human freedom.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

Life, Men, Art, Intelligence

“It is the fate of 'little faiths' of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 32

Truth, Faith, Idea, Cry

“Translation:In a letter, all we own is the address on the envelope. The contents are a matter of fate.”

P. L. Deshpande (1919–2000) Marathi writer, humourist, actor, dramatist

Alternate translation: Ultimately, it may be our name on the envelope, but someone else (God) is the one who wrote the message.
Pu La had a penchant for ending his humourous works with thought-provoking punchlines. In this quote from his work Post Office, he sums up on how life is a lot like the the letters that pass through the post office.
From his various literature