Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 117
“Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.”
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Line 376
Book III Ch. 20 First Rule, para. 1 and 2.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”
As quoted in The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers (1876) by D. M. Bennett
Posthumous attributions
Last letter to her mother, (14 May 1850).
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)
Context: I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. … I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, — here and HEREAFTER, — my dearest mother, "Your loving child, MARGARET."
“Obedience is the giving up of the resistance; obstinacy the setting up of fresh resistances.”
Sadism and Masochism : The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty, Vol. 1 (1939), p. 46
Context: An intense, unyielding stubbornness hides beneath an apparent obedience (the patient brings a vast number of dreams; his associations become endless; he produces an inexhaustible number of recollections, which seem to him very important but are actually of little moment; or he goes off upon some byroad suggested by the analyst and leads the latter into a blind alley).
The child manifests the same reactions of defiance and obedience. The child, too, can hide his stubbornness behind an excessive docility (the parent's command: You must be industrious. Industry may become a mania so that the child neither goes out nor has time to sleep). Obedience is the giving up of the resistance; obstinacy the setting up of fresh resistances. This resistance is externally active. We have in recent years had sufficient opportunity to observe the law of resistance (the passive resistance). Activity and defiance show great differences. Defiance is the reaction against activity (aggression) of the environment. It may then manifest itself actively or passively and stands in the service of the defensive tendency of the ego. Every resistance reveals the ego (one's own) in conflict with another.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 468.
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.
Youth
Context: I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.
Act. et Decr. Sacr. Concil. Recent., Coll. Lac. tom. VII, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1890, col. 10 as quoted in Paenitentiam Agere, encyclical by Pope John XXIII (1962). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
