Does fate control our lives, or are we the master? Click here to find out what experienced individuals quote, and what the famous have to say about it.
The word fate can be traced back to the Latin word Fatum, which means spoken by the Gods.
On the journey down the roads of our lives, there are so many right turns we wish we had taken, and so many wrong ones we wish we never had! And yet, when we reflect on all the good and bad places that we have been to, we come to realize that the wheel was in fact seldom in our hands.
Some believe that right from the day that we are born, it’s our fate that drives us, leading us to where we are today. They say that it is tailor-made for each and everyone one of us by a higher power, as a small, yet significant part of the grand design.
Others however reject the idea of fate, citing that believing in it would mean that we are nothing more than dried leaves being blown askew on the winds of change – we have no control on where we are and where we are heading. It would make living entirely pointless!
Yet, whether you are a believer or not, the concept of fate is certainly intriguing. It has inspired a number of people throughout the ages to express their understanding and opinions regarding it. In the following sections, we present a number of quotes from famous personalities/movies/plays, etc., pertaining to the concept of fate.
What’s meant to be will always find a way.
― Trisha Yearwood
As we move through life, the force of fate creates events that we only appreciate when we reflect on our existence.
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…
― John Lennon
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story.
― Charlotte Eriksson
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
Life calls the tune, we dance.
― John Galsworthy
When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.
― C.G. Jung
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
― Gautama Buddha, Sayings Of Buddha
I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed.
― Paulo Coelho
Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.
― Harry S Truman
Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.
― Groucho Marx
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Fate loves the fearless.
― James Russell Lowell
Love cannot save you from your own fate.
― Jim Morrison
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
― Henry David Thoreau
Fate shuffles the cards and we play.
― Arthur Schopenhauer
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view.
― Steven Spielberg
How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.
― Wilhelm von Humboldt
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
― Albert Camus
Fate pulls you in different directions.
― Clint Eastwood
Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.
― Martin Goldsmith
It is nobody’s right to be waited on and nobody’s fate to do the waiting.
― Margaret Heffernan
Fate gives you the finger and you accept.
― William Shatner
To bear is to conquer our fate.
― Thomas Campbell
Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
― Thomas Merton, Love and Living
Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?
― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
Niall: We’re tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.
― Nora Roberts, Born in Fire
For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
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.
― Brenda Cothern, Fates
Fate never knocks at the wrong door, dear. You just may not be ready to answer.
― Saralee Rosenberg, Fate and Ms. Fortune
I can’t do nothing. Just put it off. And that don’t do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain’t no more than mine.
― William Faulkner, Collected Stories
Oh, I am fortune’s fool!
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
If you try to cure evil with evil you will add more pain to your fate.
― Sophocles, Ajax
I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
Destiny is a worrying concept. I don’t want to be fated, I want to choose.
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
Let every man be master of his time.
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Often, for undaunted courage,fate spares the man it has not already marked.
― Beowulf, Beowulf
Our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
― (Hamlet, 3.2.208), Player King
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
― Marcus Aurelius
I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.
― Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive.
―Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
Fate decides who walks into your life. You decide who you let stay, who you let walk away, and who you refuse to let walk out.
―Anonymous
Love is not in our choice but in our Fate.
― John Dryden
You don’t find love, it finds you. It’s got a little bit to do with destiny, fate and what’s written in the stars.
― Anais Nin
We weren’t meant for each other. We were born to be together.
― Lena Elamin
Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.
― Anonymous
True love emanates from trust and faith and ends up becoming our fate.
―Tasneem Hameed
