Quotes about Fate

Omens are a language, it’s the alphabet we develop to speak to the world’s soul, or the universe’s, or God’s, whatever name you want to give it.  Like an alphabet, it is individual, you only learn it by making mistakes, and that keeps you from globalizing the spiritual quest.

Accept fate, and move on. Don't yield to the seductive pull of self-pity. Acting like a victim threatens your future.

To be born is to start the journey towards death.

I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair.

Through Qigong practice we become conscious participants in our destiny.  The Chinese call this yuan fen, a concept that goes beyond destiny, fate, and even karma.  As yuan fen includes these ideas, we can see that there is a continuum of energy that ties the past with the future, placing us in a present that stretches in both directions along the time line.  Qigong helps us understand that nothing is fixed, as the Tao is an everchanging flow of energy.  So our yuan fen is also flowing, constantly in flux, moving with our very thoughts and actions.  As this constant transformative process takes place, our past and future constantly change as well.  This may seem like a strange concept at first as we are taken to believe the past is a fixed reality, completed, and thus unchangeable.  If we understand the Tao, this cannot be an acceptable conclusion.  As we flow with the natural way, all in our existence flexes and reforms.  Qigong practice awakens us to the fact even our past can undergo a drastic metamorphosis.  When this occurs, the lines of causality are redefined.  Past experiences are perceived in a more universal way and with an objective clarity.  The perceived present is concurrently objectified and we are released from the perceived past.  We must simply allow ourselves to become free of the trappings that bind us to form.  As "Dreamtime" describes a maleable reality for the Aboriginal people of Australia, Qi Space assists us in releasing form and becoming the free souls we truly are.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

A person does not choose his fate; he only fulfills it. He is bound by his fate as long as he accepts the values that determine it.

I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.

Nietzsche is a determinist like Spinoza, a fatalist like the Greeks: character is fate, we only become what we already are (Aristotle's more genteel expression: no one achieves arete IN SPITE OF his base of natural potential, only because of it). Aristic moral "fiber" must exist first of all as an instinctive imperative, and second as an imperative of character, before it can be cultivated by an appropriate directorial culture. The resources that make human beings ultimately philosophical or spiritual (Aristotelian eudaimonia) are so profound and structural that of course they cannot be "learned"; if one has them, they can be developed and cultured, but that is not the same thing as "acquiring" them.

Just because you're in love with someone doesn't mean you have any business being in a relationship with them.

Free spirited free riders
they're on their way
but don't know
where they're going...

We may say that one's unrealized potential, one's undeveloped growth needs, may become one's fate. Seemingly, life demands not only adaptation to external reality but, equally, adaptation to inner reality, to what one is "meant to be" in terms of the force patterns of the objective psyche. There appears to be a compelling urge to adapt to what one is meant to be-to one's inner truth-which may have little or nothing to do with one's conscious ideas or purposes.

I resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.

Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Such is life, imaginary or otherwise: a continuous parting of ways, a constant flux of approximation and distanciation, lines of fate intersecting at a point which is no-time, a theoretical crossroads fictitiously “present,” an unstable ice floe forever drifting between was and will be. The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.

"At the moment of our birth we must also walk in the presence of our death and so I cannot tarry for want of safety nor shelter. All things must awaken to their fate and my destiny is already with you."

Every human heartbeat, he’d said many times, is a universe of possibilities.  And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he’d meant. He’d been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I’d always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuit of stars.  But I suddenly realised that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter now good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love

But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?  [...] Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute.  Only chance can speak to us

No fate but what we make.

Reading The Dark Knight Returns had woken up something or someone inside me. It had woken up my own Dark Knight, I suppose, the part of me that yearned to take on the universe, walk on the wild side, live dangerously, leap knowing full well the net would never appear, that its not appearing was precisely the point. Suddenly I craved to become a specialist in the Leap of Faith, to plummet headlong into my unknown destiny at twice the speed of death, to be a regular predator feasting for the duration of my short mammalian existence on fate’s tissues …

The world's greatest lie: At a certain point in our lives we lose control of what's happening to us and our lives become controlled by fate.

It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person’s fate. Translators use “plot” to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth.

Nietzche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called "the love of your fate." Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, "This is what I need." It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our lives are made. Destiny is made known silently.

...even I ... if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free...I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.

 . . . The mind seeks knowledge as a handle on the cosmos from which it gains leverage for greater control and self-satisfaction, but synchronicity will not allow itself to be used so roughly. Like the flea (on the ‘iron bull’), we must eventually give up our effort to penetrate the impenetrable and surrender to a reality which we cannot master but to which we must submit. In the end, to be honest to our exploration or synchronicity we must ourselves surrender to it. This means to relax and allow the sometimes fickle tide of fate to take its natural course, to let it wash over and benignly carry us. We must sacrifice the urgent, petty agendas of the ego to a larger field or participation. We must learn humility and own humor, finding guidance in intuition and making logic a servant rather than master. Control is a personal experience, surrender is a transpersonal one. Through surrender we learn to move with the rhythms that flow through our existence and in so doing open ourselves to the wellsprings of life that are the gift of the divine Trickster.

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.