“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”
Source: A Fine Balance
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Rohinton Mistry 17
Canadian writer 1952Related quotes

“We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people's agendas to control our lives.”
Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Wir müssen alle einmal erlöst werden. Die Welt zieht uns mit tausend Banden. Wir fehlen aus Gleichgültigkeit und Nachsicht und häufen neue eigene Schuld auf alte ererbte. Unser Leben ist eine Kette aus Schuld und Sühne, darüber ein nach unerforschlichen Gesetzen wirkendes Schicksal waltet.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Letter to John Page (15 July 1763); published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1905)
1760s
Context: The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavours of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under this burthen of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey’s end, when we may deliver up our trust into the hands of him who gave it, and receive such reward as to him shall seem proportioned to our merit. Such, dear Page, will be the language of the man who considers his situation in this life, and such should be the language of every man who would wish to render that situation as easy as the nature of it will admit. Few things will disturb him at all: nothing will disturb him much.

“There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related.”

The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) p.155
1880s