Quotes about fate
12 quotes · 8 authors
Quotes
Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireVicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"You mean it's my destiny?" she said at last.
"Million-to-one chances," she said, "crop up nine times out of ten."
“Ponyets! They sent you?”
“Pure chance,” said Ponyets, bitterly, “or the work of my own personal malevolent demon.”
The fates could not possibly be so malevolent, now that he had only a few hundred meters to go.
He was whistling in the dark, of course. How many aircraft had crashed at the very edge of the runway, after safely crossing an ocean? How many times had machines or muscles failed when there were only millimeters to go? Every possible piece of luck, bad as well as good, happened to somebody, somewhere. He had no right to expect any special treatment.
p. 272
He had discharged his destiny; now, perhaps, he could begin to live.
p. 187
Fate is not in man but around him.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.
...my methods of navigation have their advantage. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.
I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.
The Second World War: Closing The Ring
