c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?
— Garth Nix, Sabriel
There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.
— Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.
— Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?
— Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
— Jim Butcher, White Night
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading
— Gautama Buddha
What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside.
— Bob Dylan, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966
There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
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
You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Coincidences mean you're on the right path.
— Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?
— Thomas Merton
the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.
— Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...
— Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
— Henry Miller
Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.
— Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
I believe we make our own destinies, every last one of us.
— Morgan Rhodes, Rebel Spring
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
Character is destiny
— Heraclitus, Fragments
He knew her, and she knew him. He had no idea if the images he saw came from past or future, or both, but he knew her. Their souls were bound, had always been bound, and always would be. They were two with one soul between them, perfectly joined, perfectly fitted.
— Ann Marston, The Western King
Fate determines your caste. You must accept it and live according to the rules."You can't really believe that!"I do believe it. That man's misfortune is that he cannot accept his caste, his fate."I know that the Indians wear their caste as a mark upon their foreheads for all to see. I know that in England, we have our own unacknowledged caste system. A laborer will never hold a seat in Parliament. Neither will a woman. I don't think I've ever questioned such things until this moment. But what about will and desire? What if someone wants to change things."Kartik keeps his eyes on the room "You cannot change your caste. You cannot go against fate." That means there is no hope of a better life. It is a trap."That is how you see it," he says softly.What do you mean?"It can be a relief to follow the path that has been laid oud for you, to know your course and play your part in it."But how can you be sure that you are following the right course? What if there is no such thing as destiny, only choice?" Then I do not choose to live without destiny," he says with a slight smile.
— Libba Bray, Rebel Angels
A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Prisoner of Heaven
Your will shall decide your destiny.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny. 
— Jean Nidetch
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, When We Were Orphans
She was his north star, the fixed point round which his world turned. For as long as his heart beat, or hers, he believed they would always share a destiny.
— David Gemmell, Fall of Kings
If two people are meant to be, they'll find their way to each other.
— Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
Bound souls. He had always thought the stories of men and women bound throughout all eternity by the strength of passion, either love or hate, were but pleasant tales for long winter’s nights. Bound souls, two sides of the same counter, together through all the lives of the souls, and forever before and afterward. But he recognized the woman just as surely as she recognized him, and he knew the tales were true.
— Ann Marston, The Western King
No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
It's a funny thing, how much time we spend planning our lives. We so convince ourselves of what we want to do, that sometimes we don't see what we're meant to do.
— Susan Gregg Gilmore, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you … your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option – a choice that didn’t hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon – but he couldn’t see one.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you.
— Darren Shan, Hell's Heroes
That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you,and it is the same now - only a thousand times deeper and tenderer. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart.
— Kahlil Gibran
Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.
— Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
I shall seize fate by the throat.
— Ludwig van Beethoven
I think we're given multiple chances to meet multiple soulmates. Sure, you could meet a soulmate in highschool. But that doesn't mean if you don't act on it, you'll never meet anyone else. You will, just at a time that's more convenient for you.
— Meg Cabot, How to Be Popular
All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth.
— Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come
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
But then something happened, Ray, something amazing. Something..."That white cop sitting next to me? He took a long look at my mother when she came in, just like, absorbed her, and then without even turning to me, he just put his hand on my back, up between my neck and shoulder..."And all he did was squeeze. Give me a little squeeze of sympathy, then rubbed that same spot with his palm for maybe two, three seconds, and that was it."But I swear to you, nobody, in my entire life up to that point had ever touched me with that kind of tenderness. I had never experienced a sympathetic hand like that, and Ray, it felt like lightning."I mean, the guy did it without thinking, I'm sure. And when dinnertime rolled around he had probably forgotten all about it. Forgot about me, too, for that matter... But I didn't forget."I didn't walk around thinking about it nonstop either, but something like seven years later when I was at community college? The recruiting officer for the PD came on campus for Career Day, and I didn't really like college all that much to begin with, so I took the test for the academy, scored high, quit school and never looked back."And usually when I tell people why I became a cop I say because it would keep Butchie and Antoine out of my life, and there's some truth in that."But I think the real reason was because that recruiting officer on campus that day reminded me, in some way, you know, conscious or not, of that housing cop who had sat on the bench with me when I was thirteen."In fact, I don't think it, I know it. As sure as I'm standing here, I know I became a cop because of him. For him. To be like him. God as my witness, Ray. The man put his hand on my back for three seconds and it rerouted my life for the next twenty-nine years."It's the enormity of small things... Adults, grown-ups, us, we have so much power... And sometimes when we find ourselves coming into contact with certain kinds of kids? Needy kids? We have to be ever so careful...
— Richard Price
NOTHING goes exactly as planned.Make your OWN destiny
— Tate Hallaway, Almost to Die For
When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade.
— Andrew Carnegie
What would I do if you never came here?' But I was ALWAYS coming here. 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, Eat, Pray, Love
The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.
— Seneca
Long before they had ever met, I think this destiny awaited them. They were not like ships passing in the night. It wasn't like they didn't understand each other. They understood each other better than anyone else, and each was focused solely on the other.
— Gen Urobuchi, 監視官 常守朱  1 [Kanshikan Akane Tsunemori]
That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd.
— Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer
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, 1Q84
No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?No. It's never like what you expected.Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?
— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
God's will is your deepest desires.
— Dan Brown
but remember, nothing comes without a price. Our paths are not mapped; they’re made.
— Priya Ardis, Ever My Merlin
It's an illusion, control," Naomi said. "You ought to understand that by now, young Claire. We are never in control of our destinies, even the strongest of us. All we can hope to do is not be too badly damaged by events.
— Rachel Caine, Black Dawn
Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.
— Gail Tsukiyama, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Sow a thought, and you reap an act;Sow an act, and you reap a habit;Sow a habit, and you reap a character;Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
— Samuel Smiles, Happy Homes and the Hearts That Make Them
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, The Passion According to G.H.
What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
It was a tale well known to children all over Africa: Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered, much repaired pair of slippers even though they were objects of derision. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window they landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu Kassem was thrown in jail; when he dropped them in the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding, and off Abu Kassem went to jail...'One night when Tawfiq finished, another prisoner, a quiet dignified old man, said, 'Abu Kassem might as well build a special room for his slippers. Why try to lose them? He'll never escape.' The old man laughed, and he seemed happy when he said that. That night the old man died in his sleep.We all saw it the same way. the old man was right. The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny...In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.Ghosh sighed. 'I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.
— Barbara Taylor Bradford, To Be the Best
The black wolf’s curse awakes every time that a full moon points in the middle of the sky.
— Pet Torres, The Black Wolf's Mark
..and when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in.
— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
She felt like a baton getting passed along in a relay race, completely devoid of any control over her destiny.
— Gretchen McNeil, Possess
The Lady may favoryou, but at least I am in charge of my own destiny.
— Priya Ardis, My Merlin Awakening
We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose.
— Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche
Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.
— Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star
I believe in signs....what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect & attention to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take. When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making mistakes.
— Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
Destiny, I feel is also a relationship-a play between grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands and your actions will show measurable consequences. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he’s a little of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses-one foot is on the horse called “fate” the other on the horse called “free will”. And the question you have to ask everyday is, Which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it’s not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?
— Elizabeth Gilbert
When you are destined for greatness, it shows in everything you do.It becomes you. Greatness becomes you.
— Lorii Myers, Targeting Success, Develop the Right Business Attitude to be Successful in the Workplace
By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.
— Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
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, Peeled
After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?
— Tad Williams, Sea of Silver Light
‎Destiny finds those who listen, and fate finds the rest.
— Marshall Masters
Demographics is destiny
— Arthur Kemp
Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Once more September marveled that even the Dodo knew what she wanted to be when she was grown. She simply could not think what she herself might do. September expected that destinies, which is how she thought of professions, simply landed upon one like a crown, and ever after no one questioned or fretted over it, being sure of one’s own use in the world. It was only that somehow her crown had not yet appeared. She did hope it would hurry up.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
It is said some lives are linked across time. Connected by an ancient calling that echoes through the ages. Destiny.
— Prince of Persia 1
Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.
— F. Sionil José
Our destiny is aligned with our heart's innermost longing, a longing embedded within our soul before birth. This longing is a unique pattern or configuration reminiscent of the constellations in the night sky. When we express (press out) our unique configuration, it shines through us with an otherworldly luminosity, manifesting abundance in our lives and the lives of others. Our sole task is to yoke our inner destiny, thread it through our lives and weave it into the world. All else is just shadows and dust.
— Thea Euryphaessa, Running Into Myself
Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
The past has been there all along, reminding us: This time--maybe, hopefully, against all odds, we will get it right.
— Leslie T. Chang
The time will come when you will doubt everything you stand for, but you must push forward and never stop. Do not let others speak for you, or you will lose your voice forever.” ~The Grimoire
— S.M. Boyce, Lichgates
We walk the paths we choose.
— Barbara Wood, Vital Signs
The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.
— Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity
I have read true piety defined as: loving one’s destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of “religiousness” is the condition for real happiness. 
— Karen Blixen, Letters from Africa, 1914-1931
Try as you may, you can never defy love.
— Emery Lee, The Highest Stakes
But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
This was maybe the first time she’d done it when she’d felt the true intimacy of it. The first time she’d done it because she wanted to express her feelings for a guy in some new way she hadn’t before. The first time it meant something.The fact was, sex with a man she cared for was making all other sex pale in comparison. No wonder sex with Mike had been the best of her life from the very start—caring for him had been…destiny.Destiny in Destiny.
— Toni Blake, Sugar Creek
She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows its her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work. Destiny is bigger in men's lives. Destiny is a welcome guest in a man's house. She barely knocks and he's there to open the door. "Yes, yes. You do it," he says to destiny and lumbers back to his chair.
— Marlena de Blasi, That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story
I'm a witch and witches burn.
— Josephine Angelini, Trial by Fire
Sometimes you don't get to choose your partner. Life chooses it for you.
— C.M. Stunich, Needing Me, Wanting You
The future is not a scenario written, which we only have to act out; it is a work which we have to create.
— Roger Garaudy
A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
I once knew a man who was heir to the throne of a great kingdom, he lived as a ranger and fought his destiny to sit on a throne but in his blood he was a king. I also knew a man who was the king of a small kingdom, it was very small and his throne very humble but he and his people were all brave and worthy conquerors. And I knew a man who sat on a magnificent throne of a big and majestic kingdom, but he was not a king at all, he was only a cowardly steward. If you are the king of a great kingdom, you will always be the only king though you live in the bushes. If you are the king of a small kingdom, you can lead your people in worth and honor and together conquer anything. And if you are not a king, though you sit on the king’s throne and drape yourself in many fine robes of silk and velvet, you are still not the king and you will never be one.
— C. JoyBell C.
Geography is destiny.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
— Miguel de Unamuno
We are not called to fight the battles of our fathers with a blind faith. We are called to examine their wars, and moreover, to discern whether their actions were sinful or just. Furthermore, we are called to decide whether to correct the errors of our fathers battles through either peace, war, or some combination of the two. We are not bonded to our fathers' fate, but rather called to build on their trespasses or triumphs for a better future.
— Cristina Marrero
Endless longing; a face you'd known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you'd die for, and die of.
— Elizabeth Hand, Illyria
We seldom know what echo our actions will find, but our stories will most certainly outlast us.
— Colum McCann, TransAtlantic
Destiny is not one push, she thought as she waited to cross a quiet street on that cold Paris evening years later, but a thousand small moments that through insight and hard work you line up in the right direction, like the magnet does the metal shavings.
— Robert M. Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
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.
— Giacomo Casanova
What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?
— Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
It's up to you to make your own destiny and not up to destiny to make you
— Amit Abraham
We can't control our destiny. We can't go back into our past history and make changes. But we can begin this moment by setting a goal and pursuing it for a better life with a greater purpose.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, Maybe in Another Life
Luck's the word those with poor hearts use for ka...
— Stephen King
Silence is not our heritage but our destiny
—  we live where we want to live.
Real destiny takes everything—the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure—and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles Errant
We live behind the closed doors of our own destiny.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung - I see all this horizontally - and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like - the destiny that exists in each of us - and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone.
— Jonas Salk
They have no achievements of their own. They've made nothing, created nothing, worked at nothing. They will leave no trace that they ever existed. They have no legacy except for their names, which they did nothing to earn.
— Esmeralda Santiago, Conquistadora
We are all tied to our destiny and there is no way we can liberate ourselves.
— Rita Hayworth
You know how it is. Sometimes we plan a trip to one place, but something takes us to another.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Destiny lies before, should we choose to pursue it
— Paul Klobusicky
There is never a restless night for the dark soul. They sleep well within a destiny sealed and accepted in trade for the spoils of the earth
— Carl Henegan
There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.
— Giacomo Casanova
Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.
— Franz Liszt
Cultivate the habit of making aware choice. Your choice makes your destiny. Do not be carried away by the unconscious choices.
— Amit Ray
Destiny cutsthe cake of love,Three slices to some,To others, a crumb.
— Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
You weren't being punished. You were waiting for me.
— Jean M. Auel, The Mammoth Hunters
Life is messy.
— Shannon L. Alder
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
— Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine
I didn't find you .. I just got tripped in your destiny ...
— Rim Rafei
I don't believe the idea of Fate is that everything in our lives is predetermined. For me, it's those moments when, on reflection, Life seems to have intervened and given us a friendly or not-so-friendly nudge in another direction.
— Thea Euryphaessa, Running Into Myself
That each man is the sum of his choices is nothing less than the truth. And each, perhaps, is also something else.
— Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea
Listen to the advice of your own Destiny! All is a given!
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Doing what is right will always keep you moving forward toward your destiny, but choosing the wrong way will keep you stuck in the same spot:No Where!-Anita R. Sneed-Carter
— Anita R. Sneed-Carter
That's the thing about your destiny how are you supposed to know when it arrives? How are you supposed to recognise it from random life?
— David Baddiel, Whatever Love Means
The future is not in the hands of fate, but in ours.
— Dennis L. Bark, Americans and Europeans: Dancing in the Dark - On Our Differences and Affinities, Our Interests, and Our Habits of Life
I just follow God's lead. One step, one day and one opportunity at a time. The hardest part is not becoming distracted.
— Carlos Wallace, The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity
What if destiny doesn't care?
— Scott Westerfeld, Goliath
You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!
— Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl
I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.
— Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again
The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Still she wondered: did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?
— Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories
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."
— Sheila Moon, Knee-Deep in Thunder
Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint—this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art.  And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Believe it or not, the notions of free will and destiny are not mutually exclusive.Predestination is the universal framework of limits (based on natural physical laws) placed upon us.Free will is our infinite ability to make choices within that framework.Because the universal scale is so great—and most of it constitutes an undiscovered frontier—our choices are only limited by our knowledge, our abilities, and our imagination.To put it simply, the world is such a huge playground sandbox that we will never run out of sand or reach the faraway safety fence of destiny.So go out there and play!
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
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, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
He is convinced that the people who might mean something to him will always misjudge him and pass him by. He is not so much afraid of loneliness as he is of accepting cheap substitutes; of making excuses to himself for a teacher who flatters him, of waking up some morning to find himself admiring a girl merely because she is accessible. He has a dread of easy compromises, and he is terribly afraid of being fooled.
— Willa Cather, One of Ours
Our destinies depend on the choices we make. Be it wise or stupid.
— Paul Nat, A Rogue Element
A predetermined destiny does not exist; when a man is born, his life is open to all the possibilities; in other words, potentially, man has infinitely different destinies! All destinies are his probable destiny!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Faustina is a great work of the Creator. She has nothing of what you call brains; she doesn't need them for her destiny... It is to be glorious for a few years: not to outlive some dull husband and live on his money till she is eighty, going to lectures and comparing the attractions of winter tours that offer the romance of the Caribbean.
— Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
Maybe all the events of the last few months had occured for just one reason - to bring Thad and me together. Perhaps our being here on the Titanic wasn't pre-destination, but rather, destiny.
— Suzanne Weyn
I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythm of Earth's day, Earth's year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart.
— Stephen Baxter, Exultant
Finally Exi spoke. "There are some important things to remember always, no matter how hard life presses at you. One of these things is that wherever you are, and no matter for how long, there must be a home to hold you. You cannot know who you are unless you are contained in some way that gives you shape. Otherwise you are like a small wind, or like water losing itself in sand." He paused thoughtfully, looking at us, who had all stopped to listen. "You see," he continued, "at any place or time we have no way of knowing if we will be there a day or a week. We must let our destiny come to us. In one sense this is always true. Therefore it is needful for each of us to be defined-to live, not just wait to live. Do you understand?
— Sheila Moon, Knee-Deep in Thunder
Whatever problems we encountered, we put there. If we trace the line back, every struggle derived from some decision we made. It is not chance, it is how we teach ourselves.
— Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows
For a more than miffed Midnight, fate was for emperors, fools and soppy lovers: - fate was the self-important egotism of those doing well, the sheer unbearable arrogance of the living and loved.
— Tom Conrad
There is really nothing you gain from being a pauper rather you loose every thing.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Prince and the Pauper
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
— Emma Goldman
Make your destiny before your destiny makes you...
— Kuldeep kandasi
Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.
— William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. And upon those three lies was Elric's destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.
— Michael Moorcock, The Elric Saga Part I
But how will I know it's my destiny?' 'Like love it will possess you... You can't help but know.
— Gail Tsukiyama, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny.
— Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Environment is what you make it and destiny is how you react to your environment: whether you try to overcome it or just resign yourself to it.
— Nick Joaquín, Culture and History
Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other.
— Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out; and that is far the most unhappy thing of all. -Cassandra
— Aeschylus, The Oresteia
The universe is not a stagnant place where technology stands still and only the few govern its destiny. Rather, it is a multidimensional dynamic entity that interacts with all things, even the very smallest. And what part we each place in it and the effect we have on it is a matter of our own choice.
— R.G. Risch
Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, The Book of Snobs
When we come under the spell of the deeper domain of technology, its economic character and even its power aspect fascinate us less than its playful side. Then we realize we that we are involved in a play, a dance of the spirit, which cannot be grasped by calculation. What is ultimately left for science is intuition alone - a call of destiny.This playful feature manifests itself more clearly in small things than in the gigantic works of our world. The crude observer can only be impressed by large quantities - chiefly when they are in motion - and yet there are as many organs in a fly as in a leviathan.
— Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees
We are dust furrowed by the painful plough of Destiny to give birth to the emptiness of a time.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Come forth, Paladins!Fulfill your destiny!
— Andry Chang, Sang Pemburu
As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead.
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
He felt like a compass needle. The needle knows nothing about magnetic north; it only knows it must point in a certain direction, like it or not.
— Stephen King, The Waste Lands
Denigrating free will by confusing it with ka was worse than blasphemy
—  it was tiresome and stupid.
ego promenades, flounces, pushes in unwanted places, trips, stands on others, whereas a sense of destiny grounds - you just do what you do
— Jay Woodman
Angels are not supernatural beings who come from heaven knows where. Angels are human beings who consciously – or not – choose to be at the right place and at the right time to play their role in the universe. You are destined to be an angel.
— Charbel Tadros
Sometimes, sleepers turn up as common people who do everyday things, and create a new destiny for themselves when nobody’s watching.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D., Sleepers: A Little Book on How to Find Hope, Meaning and the Courage to Fall in Love with Your Dreams
All paths are seen, through the prism of fate
— Mladen Đorđević, Svetioničar - Vesnici oluje
We don’t do what we want to
—  we do what we are allowed to
My arrival saved the kingdom, while his only reiterated that his blood would fill the throne one day.
— Mindy McGinnis, Given to the Sea
I am condemned to a theatrical destiny.
— Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth
Oh Killian." Five immense cliffs rose up from the sea in marvelous grandeur. They were as tall and craggy and enormous as any mountains she'd seen in paintings. The layers of rock were varied in color and the radiant sunset playing against them only added to the enchantment of the location. She watched as waves crashed against the monumental stone walls.
— Leigh Ann Edwards, The Witch's Daughter
Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny.
— Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
You don't begin with a destiny. It is the sum total of your choices. The first and the last are especially important.
— Brent M. Jones
Those who think fate is against them have already crucified themselves. They have already decided what fate should do with them
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Nothing in nature happens voluntarily. Everything is forced to happen. There is a hidden hand that forces things to move.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
We are nothing but bricks from our cultural molds
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Condition A must be in place for action B to take place
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Never get angry against fate, she is looking for someone to crush, why put a spotlight on yourself?
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
We are the products of fate, from beginning to end
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Never declare fate your enemy
—  she comes with great fury against those who give up all hope
Whatever we do and are, we are given the means thereof
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
How bitter they cry in need, those who refuse to help others in trouble!
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Fate seems to scourge some people with her furies, while it ravishes others with her graces with none having done absolutely nothing to suffer the furies or merit the graces.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
You are not what you want
—  you are what you have been made to be
Well, this has been some shit.
— Pat Shand, Destiny, NY, Volume One: Who I Used to Be
I would like to outsmart the role that is destined for me. But I can't. I have failed to destroy my category.
— Ben Marcus, Notable American Women
So much happened so quickly, so much to remember forever, so much to haunt the corridors of memory. Life moves along strange paths. We are only to such a limited degree the pilot of our soul, the captain of our ship (p. 164)
— Mimi Baird
Why . . . would a penguin be in a piss pot?
— Pat Shand, Destiny, NY, Volume One: Who I Used to Be
I'm not letting the world - or anyone in it - determine my fate. Not anymore, at least. - Ginny
— Jackson Pearce, Cold Spell
Enjoy your cinnafucks!
— Pat Shand, Destiny, NY, Volume One: Who I Used to Be
Your true character in life is your destiny.
— Ron Baratono, The Writings of Ron Baratono
Wait, seriously, what's a piss pot?
— Pat Shand, Destiny, NY, Volume One: Who I Used to Be
Destiny stays stuck in the cage of words and thoughts if it is not pulled by the effective and planed efforts with the touch of a true madness your nature sparks with the every single breath that you take.
— Mohsin Ali Shaukat
A person's destiny often ends before his death.
— Milan Kundera, The Joke