Fate - Quotes

A man's character is his fate. - Heraclitus

All that is called Destiny or Fate is none other than the result of our thoughtlessness and our mistrust of ourselves; we should know that all that is created on earth is created by its sole Master and Laborer – Man. - Maxim Gorky

All we can control in life is our own choices, how we choose to live and deal with what life has to offer. Everything else is fate. - Mark Puryear

Blame it on a simple twist of fate. - Bob Dylan

Even human being is the artificer of his own fate … Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown. - H. D Thoreau

Everyone is more or less master of his own fate. - Aesop

Fate ... is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought – for causes which are unpenetrated. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate comes by our own agency. It belongs to our underlying spiritual values, because it is unattainable without experience of the world, and therefore differs from one person to the next. - Stelios Ramphos

Fate had a weird way of circling back over paths that were meant to cross. - Gail McHugh

Fate has a way of charting its own course … but before one surrenders to the hands of destiny, one might consider the power of the human spirit and the force that lies in one’s own free will. - Unknown

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. - Anne Lamott

Fate is a manifestation of natural causes. That’s it. It’s not a conscious entity. It has no plan. - Walter Wykes

Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time. - James Levine

Fate is a primitive notion that makes no sense in a land of self-made men and women. - J. Peter Euben 

Fate is written in wood, not stone. - Geraint Straker

Fate isn't black or white, right or left. People aren't just plopped down and made to follow one route in life on the whims of the gods. If that were true, we'd have to say Hitler was only a victim of his own destiny, and therefore blameless ... We have decisions to make, actions to take, good ones and bad ones that make up the texture of our lives. Everything we do or don't do matters ... Everything counts at the end of the day ... we have a pattern to make. We have to see it through, try to find a way to complete it. - Nora Roberts

Fate isn't one straight road ... There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path. - Dean Koontz

Fate isn't sentient; it can't make decisions. - Rick Chiantaretto

Fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny. - Kamran Hamid

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on. - Citium Zeno

Fate leads the willing, drags the unwilling. - Cleanthes

Fate only takes you so far. The rest is up to you. - Unknown

Fate or divine dispensation is merely a convention which has come to be regarded as truth by being repeatedly declared to be true. If this god or fate is truly the ordainer of everything in this world, of what meaning is any action (even like bathing, speaking or giving), and whom should one teach at all? No. In this world, except a corpse, everything is active and such activity yields its appropriate result. - Vankaesananda

Fate will find a way. - Virgil

For all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice. - Barack Obama

Great powers may be shaping the general turn of events, but human personalities still determine their own fate. - Dan Simmons 

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib'd, their present state. - Alexander Pope

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is. - Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. - Ronald Reagan

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. - G.K Chesterton

If anyone does not help himself, fate never can help him. -  HuanZhang Chen

If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude. - Charles Revson 

Men make their own history; but they make it under given conditions, and they become entangled thereby in a fate which is in part the result of other men having made their own history earlier. - Reinhard Bendix

Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings. - Cormac McCarthy

Our fate is something which exists outside ourselves, and which once revealed expresses the meaning of our lives. Apart, however, from soothsayers who claim to have a means of foretelling exactly what will befall us, this kind of fate is only normally revealed after a life has ended. Only then can the meaning of that life be understood. - Andrew Gamble

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So, all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. - Haruki Murakami

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometimes when one walks away from his fate, it leads one directly to fate’s doorstep. Unknown 

The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day. - Brad Meltzer

The catch-22 is either everything is based on fate or nothing is. - Rhonda Britten

The furnace which melts gold, also hardens clay. Before blaming thy fate, therefore, find whether thou art gold or clay. - Ivan Panin

The future’s not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. - John Connor

The harder thy fate, the softer thine heart. - Ivan Panin

The idea of fate has always had a special appeal in religious, mystical, and philosophical thinking. There are several compelling reasons for this fascination, the most obvious of which is that human life is short and human efforts are frequently futile. As a species endowed with the capacity for thought, people want to find some kind of explanation, purpose, or meaning for their lives. The idea that a superior force – fate – shapes the course of their lives and determines what becomes of them helps people to interpret their experiences and adjust themselves to their circumstances. Arising out of a state of anxiety and bewilderment, it thus fulfils a basic human need for order and harmony. - Dalya Cohen-mor

The wise man always reflects upon the extreme vicissitudes of fate. In times of the greatest triumph he bears in mind the transitoriness of life; in times of the greatest calamity he reflects upon the unpredictability of fortune, perhaps even the possibility of a renewal. Knowledge is virtue where it helps men attain inner peace in the midst of the fate that is their lot. - Reinhard Bendix

The word "fate" is used by people who have lost sight of who they are. - Clark Kent

The youth should be taught that he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate; that diligence is the mother of good luck; that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. - Orison Swett Marden

There’s much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it. - Diana Trilling

Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm. - George Eliot

To bear is to conquer our fate. - Thomas Campbell

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone. - William James

We seal our fate with the choices we make. - Gloria Estefan

Whatever be thy fate today, remember, this will pass away! - John Godfrey Saxe

When fate comes in to play, choice sometimes goes out the window. - Unknown 

When fate shuts a door, come in through the window. - Unknown

While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned. - Seneca

Yet they, believe me, who await no gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate. - Matthew Arnold

You can’t outwit fate by standing on the side-lines placing little side-bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything you have to play the game or you don’t play at all. And if you don’t play you can’t win. - Judith McNaught

You cannot leave everything to Fate, she’s got a lot to do. Sometimes you must give her a hand. - Leonardo da Vinci