Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Destiny
My death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me.
Addison—Cato. Act V. Sc. 1.
Che l’uomo il suo destin fugge di raro.
For rarely man escapes his destiny.
Ariosto—Orlando Furioso. XVIII. 58.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart.
E. B. Browning—A Vision of Poets. Conclusion.
There are certain events which to each man’s life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences.
Bulwer-Lytton—What Will He do with It? Bk. II. Ch. XIV.
For I am a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail,
Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto III. St. 2.
Art and power will go on as they have done,—will make day out of night, time out of space, and space out of time.
Emerson—Society and Solitude. Work and Days.
Character is fate. (Destiny).
Heraclitus. In Mullach’s Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum.
No living man can send me to the shades
Before my time; no man of woman born,
Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. VI. L. 623. Bryant’s trans.
All, soon or late, are doom’d that path to tread.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. XII. L. 31. Pope’s trans.
The future works out great men’s destinies:
The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified forever.
Lowell—Act for Truth.
We are but as the instrument of Heaven.
Our work is not design, but destiny.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Clytemnestra. Pt. XIX.
We are what we must
And not what we would be. I know that one hour
Assures not another. The will and the power
Are diverse.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. I. Canto III. St. 19.
Unseen hands delay
The coming of what oft seems close in ken,
And, contrary, the moment, when we say
“’Twill never come!” comes on us even then.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Thomas Muntzer to Martin Luther. L. 382.
They only fall, that strive to move,
Or lose, that care to keep.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Wanderer. Bk. III. Futility. St. 6.
The irrevocable Hand
That opes the year’s fair gate, doth ope and shut
The portals of our earthly destinies;
We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors
Close after us, forever.
D. M. Mulock—April.
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
Wendell Phillips—Speech. Nov. 1, 1859.
Ich fühl ’s das ich der Mann des Schicksals bin.
I feel that I am a man of destiny.
Schiller—Wallenstein’s Tod. III. XV. 171.
Truly some men there be
That live always in great horrour,
And say it goeth by destiny
To hang or wed: both hath one hour;
And whether it be, I am well sure,
Hanging is better of the twain;
Sooner done, and shorter pain.
The School-house. Pub. about 1542.
What a falling-off was there!
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 47.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Hamlet. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 28.
Imperious Cæsar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 234.
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 315.
We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind
That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff,
And good from bad find no partition.
Henry IV. Pt. II. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 194.
Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,
Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act II. Sc. 6. L. 1.
Think you I bear the shears of destiny?
Have I commandment on the pulse of life?
King John. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 91.
For it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 63.
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 117.
Things at the worst will cease or else climb upward
To what they were before.
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 24.
If he had been as you and you as he,
You would have slipt like him.
Measure for Measure. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 64.
A man whom both the waters and the wind,
In that vast tennis-court, hath made the ball
For them to play upon.
Pericles. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 63.
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 259.
What is done cannot be now amended.
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 291.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail!
Romeo and Juliet. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 112. (“Direct my suit” in folio and quarto of 1690.)
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Shelley—Song. To Men of England.
And all the bustle of departure—sometimes sad, sometimes intoxicating—just as fear or hope may be inspired by the new chances of coming destiny.
Madame De Staël—Corinne. Bk. X. Ch. VI.
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. XVIII. St. 1.
Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And should’st thou there small room for action see,
Do not for this give room for discontent.
Archbishop Trench—Sonnet.
Quisque suos patimur manes.
We bear each one our own destiny.
Vergil—Æneid. VI. 743.
Tes destins sont d’un homme, et tes vœux sont d’un dieu.
Your destiny is that of a man, and your vows those of a god.
Voltaire—La Liberté.
Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar;
Break but one
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar
Through all will run.
Whittier—My Soul and I. St. 38.
To be a Prodigal’s favourite,—then worse truth,
A Miser’s Pensioner,—behold our lot!
Wordsworth—The Small Celandine.