139 Fate Quotes

Fate is a concept that has fascinated humanity for centuries, weaving its threads through literature, philosophy, and everyday musings. It speaks to our desire to understand the forces that shape our lives, whether predetermined or shaped by choices. In this collection, we've curated 139 of the most poignant, thought-provoking, and inspiring quotes about fate. These words, gathered from a multitude of voices and perspectives, offer insight into the mysterious and often unpredictable nature of destiny. Whether you’re seeking wisdom, comfort, or a new perspective, these quotes are sure to resonate.

1. “The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.” - Cormac McCarthy

2. “Fate loves the fearless.” - James Russell Lowell

3. “When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade.” - Andrew Carnegie

4. “All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” - Seán O'Casey

5. “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. “Habent sua fata libelli et balli [Books and bullets have their own destinies]” - Ernst Jünger

7. “I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

8. “The WakingI wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me, so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.” - Theodore Roethke

9. “Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.” - Dodie Smith

10. “Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in. ” - Mary Ann Shaffer

11. “Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?” - Robin Hobb

12. “Not even need and love can defeat fate...” - Ursula K. Le Guin

13. “Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!” - Robert A. Heinlein

14. “Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all.” - Deanna Raybourn

15. “Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.” - Kevin Brockmeier

16. “so here i sit. a sum of the parts. about a third way down this wonderful path, so to speak. and i've been thinking lately about a friendship that fell apart with time, with distance, and with the misunderstanding of youth. i'm trying not to confuse sadness with regret. not the easiest thing at times. i dont regret that certain things happened. i understand that perhaps i had a choice in the matter, or perhaps i believe in fate. probably not, but so far actions as small as the quickest glance to events as monumental as death have pushed me slowly along to right here, right now. there was no other way to get here. the meandering and erratic path was actually the straightest of lines. take away a handful of angry words, things once thought of as mistakes or regrets, and i'm suddenly a different person with a different history, a different future. that, i would regret. so here i sit. thinking about a person i once called my best friends. a man who might be full of sadness and regret, who might not give a damn, or who might, just might, remember the future and realize that's where its at.” - chris wright

17. “Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.” - Edith Wharton

18. “Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.” - Sena Jeter Naslund

19. “The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

20. “The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.” - Clarice Lispector

21. “The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.” - P.S. Baber

22. “Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” - Herman Melville

23. “I was coming up on a cross street when a man wearing a filthy suit stepped out from around the corner of the building ahead and directly into my path. Bent with age, he turned bleak red eyes to me and stared. Pressed with his chest to both hands he carried a paperback book as soiled and bereft as his suit. Are you one of the real ones or not? he demanded. And after a moment, when I failed to answer, he walked on, resuming his sotto voce conversation. A chill passed through me. Somehow, indefinably, I felt, felt with the kind of baffled, tacit understanding that we have in dreams , that I had just glimpsed one possible future self. ” - James Sallis

24. “I told you we were meant to be," he says, still smiling, still so Finn, who was always here but who I just didn't see and now--Well, now I kiss him.” - Elizabeth Scott

25. “When you have something so important, something that you'll stay awake for, something you know that you were designed to do, well, it's worth getting a few dark circles, don't you think?” - Joan Bauer

26. “Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.” - Jacques Delille

27. “Why?" She asked in a confused whisper. "Out of all the women in the world, why did you choose this mortal?""Because fate drove me to you.” - Charlotte Featherstone

28. “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come” - William Shakespeare

29. “We can't choose our fate, but we can choose others. Be careful in knowing that.” - J.K. Rowling

30. “We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.” - Arthur Golden

31. “I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn’t think so. And then I wondered: Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life?I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn’t quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me. But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.” - Sue Miller

32. “Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.” - Robin Hobb

33. “[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.” - Slavoj Žižek

34. “Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it--thus!” - Mary Shelley

35. “My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was af if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she said "fate" because she couldn't pronounce the "th" sound in "faith". And later I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I wasn't denying any possibility, good or bad. I was just saying, If there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, here's where the odds should be placed.I remember the day I started thinking this, it was such a revelation to me. It was the day my mother lost her faith in God. She found that things of unquestioned certainty could never be trusted again. We had gone to the beach, to a secluded spot south of the city near Devil's Slide. My father had read in Sunset magazine that this was a good place to catch ocean perch. And although my father was not a fisherman but a pharmacist's assistant who had once been a doctor in China, he believed in his nenkan, his ability to do anything he put his mind to. My mother believed she had nenkan to cook anything my father had a mind to catch. It was this belief in their nenkan that had brought my parents to America. It had enabled them to have seven children and buy a house in Sunset district with very little money. It had given them the confidence to believe their luck would never run out, that God was on their side, that house gods had only benevolent things to report and our ancestors were pleased, that lifetime warranties meant our lucky streak would never break, that all the elements were now in balance, the right amount of wind and water.” - Amy Tan

36. “I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.” - Emily Giffin

37. “Segala hal yang dikatakan Komandan mengenai Orde adalah kebenaran yang tidak dilebih-lebihkan. Orde memang bersinonim dengan kebaikan. Orde menghargai kemajuan. Orde mencintai kehidupan. Orde bahkan mengajarkan pertobatan. Semua yang dijabarkan di dalam Kitab pada dasarnya akan berakhir pada kebahagiaan, pun setelah kematian.Akan tetapi Orde dan Kitab adalah takdir. Yang tidak dapat dibantah dan harus diterima semua orang dengan pasrah.Sama seperti penglihatanku, Orde tidak memberikan pilihan.” - Fredrik Nael

38. “Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders.” - Herman Melville

39. “Protestors? At a funeral?” - V.C. King

40. “Time and tide wait for no man.” - Stephen King

41. “Irony is Fate's most common figure of speech.” - Trevanian

42. “Sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves.” - Jean Kwok

43. “Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.” - Orson Scott Card

44. “Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.” - Ellen Hopkins

45. “It was possible that I'd thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God's fence.” - Maggie Stiefvater

46. “I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.'Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.” - Haruki Murakami

47. “Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.” - Mike Norton

48. “We as human beings appear to be in the most adverse stages in our evolution. How can the Mother Earth survive when the souls of Her sons are tainted with avarice, and the very minds which shape Her fate are dominated by ego? Minds that are prone to paranoia and can no longer trust its brothers. Humanity is at a crossroads. A crossroads which speaks of either profound change or ultimate destruction.” - Chris Cordova

49. “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.” - seneca

50. “Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in faces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.” - Herman Melville

51. “No one has free will until they are an adult, and by then the choices that were made for them, have already set them on a course that gives limited freedom in the choices to be made.” - J.D. Stroube

52. “Life is full of alternatives but no choice.” - Patrick White

53. “Glanced up and caught Ammu's gaze. Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks , its scars its wouns from old wars and the walking backwards days all fell away. In its abscence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain as water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel the heat on a hot day, or the tug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no-one noticed. In that brief moment, Velutha looked up and saw things that he hadn't seen before. Things that had been out of bounds so far, obscured by histor's blinkers....This knowing slid into him cleanly, like the sharp edge of a knife. Cold and hot at once. It only took a moment. Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History's fiends returned to claim them. To rewrap them in its old scarred pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.” - Arundhati Roy

54. “And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

55. “He'd once known a man who said that life hinged on the moment, that everything changed in the blink of an eye. Tesseract knew the truth of that as well as anybody. It was in those moments that he struck, after all, snatching people's lives away. He'd always known that it was only a matter of time before one of those moment's worked against him.” - Derek Landy

56. “Life: It is better not to wrap philosophy around such an inconceivable evolving beautiful mystery. If based on perception, alone; whatever the conclusion - it is still guessing.” - T.F. Hodge

57. “We do not choose our fate, we can only choose if we accept it. Fate will take us where it will, whether we will it or not.” (Sister Mira)” - Brenda Cothern

58. “I wonder where we are going," I said."Wherever the way is going," Exi replied calmly."But where do you suppose the way is going?""Wherever we go.""That doesn't really make sense, does it?""Oh, yes. Quite good sense.""Why?""Do you know any method by which you can go way and your path another? Not the path, but your path?""Well-" I hesitated. "Well, if you put it that way, I guess not. But what about crossroads? Couldn't you choose the wrong one?""I suppose you could. However, if it was the wrong way you chose, it would still be your way, wouldn't it?""Yes," I answered, "yes, it probably would.” - Sheila Moon

59. “You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you.” - Lisa See

60. “A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made. It had always been there inside him. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it.” - Haruki Murakami

61. “Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate.” - Sarah Jessica Parker

62. “Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?” - H. Rider Haggard

63. “The last book I picked up had a picture of the Stranger on the front cover. Although his eyes were not nearly as beautiful in my dream state, they still took my breath away. I opened it up curiously and there was one word written in a large, bolded font: FATE.” - Markelle Grabo

64. “Welcome back, Jem.” - J.A. Belfield

65. “I am on my way, and tell him he better watch his ass!” Jack shouted, and I held the phone away from ear so it wouldn’t damage my eardrums. “Real mature, Jack,” Peter scoffed” - Amanda Hocking

66. “One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.” - Agatha Christie

67. “Yeah. A feeling. Like the whole point of my life from the alleys in Bangkok to the yachts and private island to coming here like a crazy person trying to fly a helicopter like all of it from birth to here point A to point Z was all some big cosmic trick to get me to meet you. - Sanjit to Lana” - Michael Grant

68. “That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.” - Anna Godbersen

69. “That is life, isn’t it? Fate. Luck. Chance. A long series of what-if’s that lead from one moment to the next, time never pausing for you to catch your breath, to make sense of the cards that have been handed to you. And all you can do is play your cards and hope for the best, because in the end, it all comes back to those three basics.Fate. Luck. Chance.” - Kelseyleigh Reber

70. “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.” - Thomas Merton

71. “The ferocity of Santiago Nasar's fate, which had collected twenty years of happiness from him not only with his death but also with the dismemberment of his body and its dispersion and extermination.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

72. “I use this as a paradigm for our whole attitude toward life, what you did was you worked very hard, you try to understand and try to direct these complicated, powerful forces and at the very end of the struggle you've made no progress at all. That upon discovering that, you've raised to a lofty moral height, and you've accepted your fate, and somehow went on.” - Philip K. Dick

73. “We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.” - Miranda July

74. “And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

75. “But the child shouldn't be blamed for the father's crime, she tried to reason with herself, then. But should the child therefore also enjoy the father's illicit gain?” - kiran desai

76. “But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.” - Mikhail Bulgakov

77. “He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.” - Cormac McCarthy

78. “No matter how pathetic or pitiful, every human is fated to have one moment in their lives in which they can change their own destiny.” - Takayuki Yamaguchi

79. “Even if the decisions one made on a given day seemed crazy, it helped to think that all things happened for a mysterious reason.” - Lorna Jane Cook

80. “A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.” - J.D. Stroube

81. “Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only that's so old-fashioned.” - John Galsworthy

82. “Things take care of themselves  as long as you trust and don't try to control too much. Things will happen. Things tend to occur. Why resist what's inevitable? That's like swimming against the current, salmon notwithstanding. Go with the flow, you know? Glide with the glow, man. It's easier.” - Tony Vigorito

83. “You cannot outwit fate by placing little sidebets on the outcome of life. It's either you wade in and play in order to win or you don't play at all." - Matthew Farrell” - Judith McNaught

84. “To lead a blameless life you must curb your passions , and whatever misfortune may befall you cannot be ascribed by anyone to want of good luck, or attributed to fate; these words are devoid of sense, and all fault will rightly fall on your own head.” - Casanova

85. “Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.” - Helen Keller

86. “You don't choose what to believe. Belief chooses you.” - Steven Galloway

87. “Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.” - Mike Norton

88. “For nothing is evil in the beginning.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

89. “My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...” - Alexander Pushkin

90. “A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.” - Haruki Murakami

91. “The lines of fate on my hand, once so bright, faded into echo.The memory of his face in my dreams, once so luminous passed into shadow.” - Farrah Naseem

92. “(..)Fate has al­ways been a po­tent force in Rus­sia, where, for gen­er­ations, cit­izens have had lit­tle con­trol over their own des­tinies. Fate can be a bitch, but, as Za­it­sev, Dvornik, and Onofre­cuk had dis­cov­ered, it can al­so be a tiger.” - John Vaillant

93. “Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.” - Truman Capote

94. “It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.” - Pat Conroy

95. “If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.” - Bernard Knox

96. “You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? Like, if either you or I wouldn’t have made it, where would the other one be right now? It was something I thought about all the time: how death changes every remaining moment for those still living.” - Tiffanie DeBartolo

97. “The banana flavour of his accidental conception, and the banana theme of his accidental death, now all seemed to conspire against him and rather suggest the universe, Mr Fate or whoever did have some sort of master plan after all. Despite all his earlier conjecturing, maybe the universe, Mr Fate or whoever was laughing its fat and meddling head at him. The outlandish evidence did seem to speak for itself, truly suggesting a mocking narrative devised by some mischievous author because quite simply a banana condom had brought Midnight into the world and a banana skin had seen him out. Putting those two seeming truths together, Midnight was once again forced to ask such confused and searching questions like:What is this place, where am I heading? And what’s the deal with all the ruddy bananas?” - Tom Conrad

98. “Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.” - Neal Shusterman

99. “ce qui (...) peut arriver de mieux à un individu c'est d' "avoir la chance d'être né au sein du peuple qu'il faut au moment de l'histoire qu'il faut" : grec et non barbare, aux siècles de Solon et Périclès ; romain et non pas grec, au temps d'Auguste et des débuts de la Pax romana ; chrétien et non pas juif, ensuite, quand l'Europe se christianise et que commencent les pogromes (...) le mieux qui puisse arriver à un sujet c'est de naître occidental ; le pire, la catastrophe irrémédiable, la figure même de l'infortune, du tragique, de la damnation, c'est d'être né burundais, angolais, sud-soudanais, colombien ou, comme la petite Srilaya, sri-lankais. (ch. 15Arendt, Sarajevo : qu'est-ce qu'être damné ?)” - Bernard-Henri Levy

100. “She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.” - Mary Balogh

101. “A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.” - Idries Shah

102. “LIfe is just a game of chance, a dance with fate if you let it be so. Or you could chose to play by your rules to win.” - Steven Redhead

103. “Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

104. “The moment that followed was one that would forever change the course of her life. She reflected on it later, and wondered how such a short matter of seconds could alter so permanently every part of her existence. Like an unstoppable line of dominoes, the moment was the flick that set everything into motion.” - Jennifer Perry

105. “Fate, they say, fate- the clay that molds the events of your life, and it was the same fate that had thrown the stone of her heart on the building of his expectations. But then wasn't it his fault that he had constructed the building of glass? Hadn't he failed to cement the bricks of his love with trust and colour them with security? There was no insurance for broken hearts, no ointment for wounded souls and there would never be one, he knew.” - Faraaz Kazi

106. “But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry (of life) will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge of the world that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.” - Cormac McCarthy

107. “Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.” - Marion Zimmer Bradley

108. “Well, this is the hardest part to believe; look, you can suspend me if you want to, but it's the God's honest truth. This man Tompkins came all the way down to where I was bending over the body at the foot of the stairs. I straightened up and covered him with my gun. It didn't faze him in the least, he kept moving right on past me toward the street-door. Not quickly, either; as slowly as if he was just going out for a walk. He said, 'It isn't my time yet. You can't do anything to me with that.' ("Speak To Me Of Death")” - Cornell Woolrich

109. “Fate has a twisted sense of humor.” - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

110. “Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.” - Jonathan Tropper

111. “I wish I could have shown you that engineheart- the system of pieces and parts that moved us forward, that moves us forward still. One day, a few weeks after my son’s death, I took the bolt off the casing and opened it up. Just to see how it worked. Opening that heart was like the opening the first page of a book- there were characters (me, the Memory of My Father), there was rhythm and chronology, I saw, in the images, old roads I’d forgotten- and scenes from stories where the VW was just a newborn. I do know that it held a true translation: miles to words, words to notes, notes to time. It was the HEART that converted the pedestrian song of Northampton to something meaningful, and it did so via some sort of fusion: the turtle that howls a bluegrass tune at the edge of Bow Lake becomes a warning in the VW heart…and that’s just the beginning- the first heart layer. It will take years and years of study, and the energy of every single living thing, to understand the tiny minds and roads in the subsequent layers, the mechanics at work to make every single heartmoment turn together… The point is, this WAS always the way it was supposed to be. Even I could see that the Volkswagen heart was wired for travel-genetically coded. His pages were already written-as are mine and yours. Yes, yours too! I am looking into your eyes right now and I am reading your life, and I am excited/sorry for what the road holds for you. It’s going to be amazing/really difficult. You’ll love/loathe every minute of it!” - Christopher Boucher

112. “He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.” - Victor Hugo

113. “Each of us carries a sleeping tiger inside, and we can’t predict when that cat will wake, stretch, and sharpen its claws.” - Holly Robinson

114. “ما الجدوى من حمل مفكّرة إن كان القدر هو من يملك الممحاة.. والقلم” - أحلام مستغانمي

115. “The unknown is scary the Unknown can also be exciting. Your life could change in an instant anytime. But sometimes, that change is the best thing that will ever happen to you.Maybe I don’t have to know what my fate is to know that everything will be okay. Maybe the not knowing is how we move forward. Wherever I’m headed, I know it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.” - Susane Colasanti

116. “Delphine witnessed awful things occurring to other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life--disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.” - Louise Erdrich

117. “If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself… and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.” - Stephen King

118. “Time whips up cream for those who are ready for dessert.” - Lara Biyuts

119. “All we can do is pray, Ma, pray.No, Child, these are the deeds of human beings. Planned by the brains of humans, and by the warped hearts of humans. It is to people we must speak our words. God has never sided with the defeated.” - Pramoedya Ananta Toer

120. “My death granted immortality.With one look, I knew he’d be my undoing…” Forgotten, book #1 of the Fate Trilogy” - Sarah J. Pepper

121. “It's fate, but fate just gives us a nudge in the right direction onthe fast lane, I guarantee she doesn't have her hands in your pockets while she's doing it” - Shelly Crane

122. “Everything in Tom's cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.” - Ken Follett

123. “Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.” - Laini Taylor

124. “You cannot force things apart that are bound at the heart.” - Ashly Lorenzana

125. “Last Friday in the music room, every word I said felt like I was taking a knife to my own skin, cutting so deep that I thought I would never know how to not feel pain again,” he said, his voice remarkably calm for such a strong statement. “The worst of it was knowing that in fighting us being together, I was still causing you pain. I can’t do it anymore.” He stood still, focused intensely on me. “Do you believe that we have the ability to change destiny?” - Michelle Madow

126. “... here's what I believe - sometimes God has a Plan B...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

127. “That was a matter suspended between heaven and earth, awaiting the hand of destiny.” - Paulo Coelho

128. “As you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong, you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.” - Douglas Coupland

129. “How fate is stubborn and holds to habit.” - Susan Abulhawa

130. “When life gives you lemons, you don't make lemonade. You use the seeds to plant a whole orchard - an entire franchise! Or you could just stay on the Destiny Bus and drink lemonade someone else has made, from a can.” - Anthon St. Maarten

131. “Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery. If she had not come along the Via Piemonte that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piemonte that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will.("For The Rest Of Her Life")” - Cornell Woolrich

132. “Fate doesn’t care about family. When the time is up, she nicks at the thread” - Cecilia Robert

133. “Life gives us the music but we can raise or lower the volume as we like ” - Natalia Lizardo

134. “You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens....loudly screamed....Trying to change our nightmares into dreams...” - Maya Angelou

135. “Ah, cruel fate, how swiftly joy and sorrow alternate!” - Raimbaut de Vaqueyras

136. “Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.” - Wilbur Smith

137. “I see it in your eyes as I see it in hers. Remember, there is always light where there is love and if that is what is meant to happen between the two of you, then it was destined.” - L.G. Castillo

138. “Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?” - Anton Chekhov

139. “I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wishing them to come. They might have wished and wished for an unnatural evil to fall upon them but, for a while at least, nothing happened. Then the wishing stopped, the old wishes were forgotten yet at the same time gathered in strength, distilling themselves into a potent formula (who can say!), until one day the terrible season began. Because had they really told the truth, this artistic crowd might also have expressed what a sense of meaning (although of a negative sort), not to mention the vigorous thrill (although of an excruciating type), this season of unnatural evil had brought to their lives.("Gas Station Carnivals")” - Thomas Ligotti