Quotes about destiny
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“Warmblood now a bloodborne death,
Will rob your body of it's breath
Mark your skin and seal your fate
The Underland becomes a plate”

Suzanne Collins Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Source: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Death

“It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Way, Suffering, Help

“I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ich glaube an Spinozas Gott, der sich in der gesetzlichen Harmonie des Seienden offenbart, nicht an einen Gott, der sich mit Schicksalen und Handlungen der Menschen abgibt. <br class="br">24 April 1929 in response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 27 (German) words. The New York Times 25 April 1929 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B1EFC3E54167A93C7AB178FD85F4D8285F9 <br class="br">Similarly, in a letter to Maurice Solovine, he wrote: "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." <br class="br">As quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html by Arnold V. Lesikar <br class="br">1920s

God, World, Law

“And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

Heart

“… remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went, you can curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Dogs, Way, Madness

“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: The Crisis

Soul

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls”

Dean Koontz book The Darkest Evening of the Year

Source: The Darkest Evening of the Year

Love, Dogs, Soul, Heart

“I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.”

Katherine Paterson Preacher's Boy

Source: Preacher's Boy

“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Life

“Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

Forgiveness

“The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.”

Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998) journalist from the United States

Letter as quoted in "Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life" (2003) written by Caroline Moorehead, pg. 142.

Way

“Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

Time

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Lie, World, Boy

“So you’re telling me that right now I’m responsible for Acheron’s beloved pet and the favorite sister of the Fates? (Zarek)
Tell Fang-boy I’m not a pet. If he doesn’t take a nicer tone to me, he’s going to be really sorry. (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Boy, Sister

“Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die…”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Birth

“Time to travel, to acquiesce to fate.”

Patti Smith M Train

M Train

Travel, Time

“I will always buy extra yarn. I will not try to tempt fate.”

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (1968) Canadian writer

Source: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

“Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Future

“When you're attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.
- Sleepless in Seattle”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Thinking, Perfection

“I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate.”

John Scalzi book Redshirts

Source: Redshirts

Personality

“My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

Life, Feeling, Loss, Chance

“The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Four VII
is 5 (1926)

Wisdom, World, Fools, Spring

“Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

“Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Love, Sadness, Sense, Indifference

“I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "But I do believe in… loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents — happy or otherwise — and taking advantage of these.”

Robin McKinley book Sunshine

Source: Sunshine

Happiness, World, Thinking

“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

“We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Help, Forgetting

“But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Variant: Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand - even in dreams.
Source: The Time Keeper

Way, Understanding

“I am the god Apostolos. The Harbinger of Telikos. The Final Fate of all. Beloved son of Apollymi the Great Destroyer. My will makes the will of the universe. [Apostolos / Acheron Parthenopaeus]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

God, Universe

“Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Variant: Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?
Source: The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)

Dreams, Hope, Change

“I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Science

“Think long and hard about how you proceed, Nico di Angelo. You cannot lie to Cupid. If you let your anger rule you… well, your fate will be even sadder then mine.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Lie, Thinking, Anger

“Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Happiness, Revenge

“There's nothing happy about having your fate decided for you! You have to grab your own happiness!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Happiness

“It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

People

“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

~ The Poison Belt”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Future

“Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Life, Chance

“I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Life, Imagination

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

Life, Birth

“Achilles was murdered with a poisoned arrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”

John Updike Brazil

Source: Brazil

Love, Death, Fear, Birth

“She had to go on this quest. The fate of the world might depend on it. But part of him wanted to say: Forget the world. He didn’t want to be without her.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

World, Parting, Dependency, Forgetting

“To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Change, Powerful

“Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Wisdom, Kiss, Valentine's Day, For Him

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Future

“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Indifference

“After all, tragedy didn't discriminate, so everyone was subject to the same whims of fate.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

“Was it fate? Was it destiny?"
"I think it was Alan Blunt.”

Anthony Horowitz book Ark Angel

Source: Ark Angel

Thinking

“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”

Philip K. Dick book Galactic Pot-Healer

Source: Galactic Pot-Healer

“Just let your hand drop; and let fate decide for you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Choke

“I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Life

“Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Death

“fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Way, Cooking

“Nico was wrong. The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.

Some scars never heal.
Then again, some do.”

Brad Meltzer (1970) writer

Books

“Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,
When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,
And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,
Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

Way

“It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

Time

“I suppose we must work on being gracious and grateful until we can do for ourselves. Someday the wheel of fate will put us in a position to be of use to them, and we will remember how much easier it is to give help than it is to accept it.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Help

“But adulthood," continued the barely twentysomething, "doesn't give you power over what matters most. It doesn't protect you from pain, loss, fate. That's part of being human.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Tantalize

Pain, Loss, Parting, Adulthood

“Are you mad? (Artemis)
Yes, I am. Mad at this world where we are nothing to the gods. Mad at the Fates who put us here for no purpose except to toy with us for their petty amusement. I wish all of the gods were dead and gone. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

God, World, Madness, Dead

“Lady Madelyne had sealed her own fate. She'd warmed his feet.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Honor's Splendour

“I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.”

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) British writer

Source: The Game of Kings

Men, Time

“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 3; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/550046337547665409

Personality, Courageous

“He didn't think much of fates and prophecies, but he did believe in one thing: Annabeth and he were supposed to be together.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Thinking

“But they were fated to misunderstand each other.”

Rafael Sabatini book Captain Blood

Source: Captain Blood

“The hands of Fate keep time on a heart-shaped watch."

- Harkat Mulds(The Trials of Death)”

Darren Shan book Trials of Death

Source: Trials of Death

Death, Time, Heart

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

Despair

“as I said, I believe in fate. Things happen as they are meant to be. We just have to recognize our destiny.”

Edward Rutherfurd (1948) British writer

Source: Russka: the Novel of Russia

“Nix had told Emma before she'd left for Europe that on this trip she would 'do that which you were born to do.' Apparently, Emma was born to get kidnapped by a deranged Lykae. Her fate sucked.”

Kresley Cole book A Hunger Like No Other

Source: A Hunger Like No Other

“So does nobody care about Ireland?"
"Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy.”

Edward Rutherfurd (1948) British writer

Source: The Rebels of Ireland

Men

“When two people are meant to be together, they will be together. It's fate.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Variant: When two people are meant to be together, they will be together. It's fate." - Jacob Jankowski, Water For Elephants
Source: Water for Elephants

People

“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Love, Bad luck

“Character is fate.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“It seemed as if some subtle current of recognition had passed between them… not as if they had met before… but as if they had come close several times until finally an impatient Fate had forced their paths to intersect.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Time

“Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

St. 9.
A Psalm of Life (1839)
Source: Longfellow's Poems

Learning, Waiting, Heart

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Chance

“Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

“Instead of lamenting your fate, create your world.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

World

“She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“I'm coming to believe that there are two kinds of people… those who choose to be masters of their own fate and those who wait in chairs while other dance. I would rather be one of the former than the latter.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

People, Waiting, Dance

“The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

Life, Chance, Time

“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Waiting

“I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Happiness, Nature, Thinking

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, John Wesley Harding (1967), All Along the Watchtower
Context: "No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"

Life, Feeling, Falseness