Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience.

Henry David Thoreau

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

Henry David Thoreau

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Henry David Thoreau

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.

Jeremy Bentham

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.

Henry Miller

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

Henry Miller

We create our fate everyday

Henry Miller

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.

Henry Miller

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

Helen Keller

I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.

Cate Blanchett

The notion of fate and destiny is a very Greek concept. Working in the theater you do think a lot about that, because as a storyteller you do think, 'At what point was this always going to happen and what part have I got a hand in being able to change things?'

George Eliot

Fate has carried me 'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast To pierce another.

James Branch Cabell

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

J. R. R. Tolkien

And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

Immanuel Kant

Human reason has the peculiar fate ... that it is burdened with questions that it cannot dismiss ... but which it also cannot answer.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,Can circumvent or hinder or controlThe firm resolve of a determined soul.Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;All things give way before it soon or late.What obstacle can stay the mighty forceOf the sea seeking river in its course,Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

One should treat one's fate as one does one's health; enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poor, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort.

Jennifer Hudson

If it’s meant for me, it will be.' Those words are my mantra in life, and it has never let me down.

Jeff Buckley

Fate is gonna find you in your glass of champagne.

Jean-Paul Sartre

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Georges Duhamel

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

George S. Patton

Sometimes I think your life and mine are under the protection of some supreme being or fate , because, after many years of parallel thought, we find ourselves in the positions we now occupy.

Jim Harrison

Fate has never ladled out hardship very evenly, and this frequently trips our often infantile sense of justice.

Jennifer O'Neill

If you go into a relationship expecting someone else to fill you up, you're doomed right off.

Jeffrey Sachs

The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.

James Cameron

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make.

Francois Rabelais

Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do's ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.

Francois Rabelais

Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.

George Chapman

Fate's such a shrewish thing.

Christoph Martin Wieland

The compulsion of fate is bitter.