Quotes
Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
Coincidences are the scars of fate.
From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife,
what grain will be saved?My son, believe me, nothing remains,
Only adult toil,
the furrow of fate in the palm.
Only toil,
Nothing more.
One must be very naive to believe that it will do any good to cry out and shout in the world, as if that would change one's fate. Better take things as they come, and make no fuss.
Alas, the doors of fortune do not open inward, so that by storming them one can force them open; but they open outward, and therefore nothing can be done.
p. 23
"Water if God wills it", he reminded himself. "About the great matters, Roland, you have no say".Not a comfortable truth, especially for a man on a quest such as his, but one he's learned to live with.
He calmly fell asleep, believing the worst was over. He did not know—old Herr Trotta—that fate was brewing bitter grief for him while he slept. He was old and tired, and death was already lurking, but life would not yet let him go. Like a cruel host it held him fast at the table because he had not yet tasted all the bitterness that had been prepared for him.
p. 244
This is my thought, that for every soul, something must come to pass, and for everything that does come to pass, every soul can imagine many things that might have come to pass, all of them less evil than what actually fell out. Folk must have something to think on, or they would be unable to hope for Heaven or remember Paradise.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Why me? is not something the universe ever answers.
p. 72
Of all the unthinkable events in his life, the fact that the universe had put him beside this woman felt the most unlikely.
p. 265
