Last Updated: February 21, 2023 by Quote.cc Team
The word fate can be traced back to the Latin word Fatum, which means spoken by the Gods. Fate is a beautiful concept that can help bring a sense of calm to our lives during testing times.
Most of us know fate, but not everyone believes in it.
Human life is full of troubles and opportunities. Certain situations are in our control, and some are not. Many people believe that problems that are not in our control are controlled by fate. Whether they call it fate, destiny, or fortune, people have long been pondering the concept of how much power we have over our lives. The serious question of fate is imbued into works of art, poetry, novels, movies, and philosophical essays across cultures and eras. Essentially, fate is defined as our life story’s ultimate path or outcome.
Yet, whether you are a believer or not, the concept of fate is undoubtedly intriguing. It has inspired several people to express their understanding and opinions regarding it throughout the ages. To celebrate the wonder of fate, we have collected a list of the best fate quotes. From fate quotes from scholars to fate quotes from celebrities, so many people from past and present times believe in fate. The belief that fate exists is beautiful in power beyond our understanding.
200 Fate Quotes
Top 10 Fate Quotes
“Your beliefs, all of those formless energy patterns that you’ve adopted as your self-image, have the ability to change dramatically and give you the power to conquer unwanted traits, or what you unhappily presume to be your fate.” – Wayne W. Dyer
“You weren’t being punished you were waiting for me.” – Jean M. Auel
“You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.” – Goldie Hawn
“When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive.” – Paulo Coelho
“When God takes out the trash, don’t go digging back through it. Trust Him.” – Amaka Imani Nkosazana
“When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” – Dale Carnegie
“When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make lemonade.” – Dale Carnegie
“When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.” – C.G. Jung
“Whatever is going to happen will happen, whether we worry or not.” – Ana Monnar
“What’s meant to be will always find a way.” – Trisha Yearwood
What is Fate?
“Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.” – Martin Goldsmith
“Fate throws fortune, but not everyone catches.” – Polish proverb
“Fate shuffles the cards and we play.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“Fate shows a different face, the gulf between what we are and what we think we are.” – Stelios Ramphos
“Fate rules the affairs of mankind with no recognizable order.” – Seneca
“Fate pulls you in different directions.” – Clint Eastwood
“Fate never knocks at the wrong door, dear. You just may not be ready to answer.” – Saralee Rosenberg
“Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling.” – Seneca
“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.” – Amy Tan
“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fate is not quite as strange as it appears!” – John McLeod
“Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are; struggle against it and you’ll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it, and you’ll survive.” – Cassandra Clare
“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.” – Lemony Snicket
“Fate is like a strange unpopular restaurant, filled with waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.” – Lemony Snicket
“Fate gives you the finger and you accept.” – William Shatner
“Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.” – Jacques Delille
“Fate and me, we have a thing.” – The Doctor
“Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.” – Jonathan Tropper
“Fate – everything happens for a reason. And when fate happens look for the good in it as it is there!” – Catherine Pulsifer
Best Fate Quotes
“What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.” – William Shakespeare
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” – Henry David Thoreau
“We weren’t meant for each other. We were born to be together.” – Lena Elamin
“We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.” – Amy Tan
“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
“We create our fate every day we live.” – Henry Miller
“We can’t choose our fate, but we can choose others. Be careful in knowing that.” – J.K. Rowling
“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.” – William James
“We are partners by fate.” – We become friends by choice. Jacquie McTaggart
“We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.” – Philip Pullman
“We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.” – Douglas Coupland
“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.” – Thomas Jefferson
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” – Gautama Buddha
“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
“It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.” – W. Somerset Maugham
“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” – Joseph Conrad
“It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.” – Henry David Thoreau
“It is nobody’s right to be waited on and nobody’s fate to do the waiting.” – Margaret Heffernan
“It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one’s own fate for half-an-hour.” – Hilaire Belloc
“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.” – Francis Bacon
“Irony is Fate’s most common figure of speech.” – Trevanian
“And not the calm or the strife.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“Always remember age is only a date and you determine your own fate.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“Although parents can’t ultimately determine the outcome of their children, they do have a tremendous influence on them.” – Scott Turansky
“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” – Seán O’Casey
“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“Actions are the seed of fate.” – Harry S. Truman
“A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.” – La Rochefoucauld
“I believe that almost all significant things are controlled by fate.” – Jerry Bower
“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“How you feel and how you react is in direct relation to how you think. Some people let random circumstances predict their day.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.” – Wilhelm von Humboldt
“Here I am myself – you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus” – Oedipus
“For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.” – Jeanette Winterson
“First, imagine taking the potentially regret – producing path of inaction.” – Wayne Dyer
Love Fate Quotes
“To simplify things down to their real essence, whenever things go wrong in our lives, whenever our plans go awry and the things we took for granted suddenly disappear, we have a very simple choice.”
“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“To bear is to conquer our fate.” – Thomas Campbell
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…” – John Lennon
“There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” – Albert Camus
“The world is made of spider webs. The threads are stuck to me and you. Be careful what you’re wishing for, ’cause when you gain you just might lose.” – Joan Osborne
“The word fate can be traced back to the Latin word Fatum, which means spoken by the Gods.” –
“The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.” – Jean Paul
“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.” – Max Weber
“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.” – Mikhail Bulgakov
“Fate loves the fearless.” – James Russell Lowell
“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
“True love emanates from trust and faith and ends up becoming our fate.” – Tasneem Hameed
“Love is not in our choice but in our Fate.” – John Dryden
“More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.” – Books are my compensation for the harms of fate. They give me a world for a lost world
“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.” – Anonymous
“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.” – Anaïs Nin
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” – Thomas Merton
Bad Fate Quotes
“That consciousness is everything and that all things begin with a thought.” – That we are responsible for our own fate
“Tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.” – Lord Byron
“Take it from me, Fate doesn’t care most of the time.” – Diana Wynne Jones
“Strange things conspire when one tries to cheat fate.” – Rick Riordan
“Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.” – Robin Hobb
“Sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves.” – Jean Kwok
“Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.” – Mandy Hale
“Sometimes God will place a wall on your path to force you to go in another direction.” – Suzy Kassem
“Some things are destined to be — it just takes us a couple of tries to get there.” – J.R. Ward
“Luck of the draw, or meant to be? Our lives are impacted by forces we cannot explain, often changed for reason we will never totally understand. However, when people are touched by the hand of fate, they know it. Whether fate brings them their heart’s desire, or forever closes the door to their dreams, the path that has brought them to that point is clear, and fate’s irony is unmistakable.” – Thomas Wilson
“Instead of viewing obstacles as reasons to give up, view them as tests. A higher power (God, fate, the creative force of the universe) has put them in your path to determine if you’re worthy of success.” – James O’Donnell
“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
“If you try to cure evil with evil you will add more pain to your fate.” – Sophocles
Fate And Destiny Quotes
“Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.” – David O. McKay
“You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.” – Philip Pullman
“While fate sometimes happens, we can determine our own destiny by the choices we make today.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“When we are born, no one immediately knows our destiny or outcome in life, save the Creator Himself, but while we are here, we too can choose and direct ourselves onto a path to better our circumstances.” Carey W.” – Digsby Jr
“When it comes to fate, you have to realize that it is different than destiny. Destiny is where things are predetermined and it doesn’t matter what you do in life, because you will never be able to change your ending, however, fate is what you will need to think about when it comes to your choices. When it comes to choices you will need to consider that you have some type of say in your fate (to a degree), but you don’t any say in your destiny.” – Hamid Hacker
“What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.” – Samuel Beckett
“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“Tenacious people don’t rely on luck, fate, or destiny for their success. And when conditions become difficult, they keep working.” – John C. Maxwell
“Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.” – Fidel Castro
“Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.” – Mario Puzo
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare
“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” – Tony Robbins
“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” – Winston Churchill
“I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.” – Angelina Jolie
“I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.” – Jeanette Winterson
“I can control my destiny, but not my fate.” – Paulo Coelho
“I am the master of my fate and the captain of my destiny.” – Nelson Mandela
“Fate, coincidence, luck, chance … ? I don’t think so. I am convinced that many times, in the course of our lives, God challenges us with a golden opportunity, a seemingly impossible hurdle, or a terrible tragedy … and how we react – or fail to react – determines the course of our future, almost as if we were involved in some sort of heavenly chess game … with our destiny always in the balance.” – Og Mandino
“Fate and self-help share equally in shaping our destiny.” – Proverb
“Every people should be originators of their own destiny.” – Martin Delany
“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.” – Bob Marley
“Destiny is a worrying concept. I don’t want to be fated, I want to choose.” – Jeanette Winterson
“Character is destiny.” – Heraclitus
“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” – Jack Welch
“Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view.” – Steven Spielberg
“Actions are the seed of fate. Deeds grow into destiny.” – Harry S. Truman
“A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
“For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.” – Ronald Reagan
“This is how life works. We are neither the authors nor the pawns of our life stories but rather partners somehow with fate or destiny or circumstance or providence.” – John Ortberg
“Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story.” – Charlotte Eriksson
“Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do.” – Nicholas Sparks
“Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.” – Dante Alighieri
“Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.” – Simon Van Booy
“Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.” – Voltaire
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.” – Sun Tzu
Fate And Karma Quotes
“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.” –
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“Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!” – John Dryden
“Remember, upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.” – Alexander the Great
“Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.” – Alfred Victor Vigny
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
“Our eventual fate will be the sum of the stories we told ourselves long enough.” – Crystal Woods
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.” –
“Oh, I am fortune’s fool!” – William Shakespeare
“Often, for undaunted courage,fate spares the man it has not already marked.” – Beowulf
“Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully.” – Albert Camus
“Let nothing distract us from being happy, let nothing else determine our fate, but ourselves.” – Olehile Fischer Thataone
“Let every man be master of his time.” – William Shakespeare
“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.” – Rick Riordan
“Just because fate doesn’t deal you the right cards, it doesn’t mean you should give up.” – Les Brown
“Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.” – Terry Pratchett
“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Maybe fate isn’t the pond you swim in but the fisherman floating on top of it, letting you run the line wild until you are weary enough to be reeled back in.” – Jodi Picoult
“Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.” – Erich Fromm
“If you ensure that your team can’t operate efficiently without you, you may have sealed your own non-promotional fate.”
“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” – Charles Revson
“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
“I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses I have been versed in the reasonings of men but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.” – Euripides
“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
“I do not believe in fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in fate that falls on them unless they act.” – G K Chesterton
“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.” – Buddha
“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
“Everything happens when it’s supposed to.” – Michelle C. Ustaszeski
“Everything comes gradually at its appointed hour.” – Ovid
“Everyone shares the same fate.” – Alan Lightman
“Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“Every person has the power to change their fate if they are brave enough to fight for what they desire more than anything.” – Stephanie Garber
“Each man is the architect of his own fate.” – Appius Claudius
“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.”
Fate Quotes About Life
“When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.” – Julia Glass
“When I was younger, things happened in my life that made me wonder if they were a coincidence or was it fate? And now, as the years have passed, I strongly believe everything happens for a reason.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“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
“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” – Joan of Arc
“Of course a human life advances from day to day, and regresses, and we do see different faculties develop and watch them wither. Still, the innate image of your fate holds all in the copresence of today, yesterday, and tomorrow.” – James Hillman
“My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you.” – Alexander Pushkin
“Many men would take the death sentence without a whimper to escape the life sentence which Fate carries in her hand.” – T. E. Lawrence
“Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.” – Groucho Marx
“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” – Allen Saunders
“Life is uncertain, the future unknown. This is neither good nor bad. It just is, like gravity. Yet the task remains: how to master our own fate, even so.” – Jim Collins
“Life calls the tune, we dance.” – John Galsworthy
“I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.” – Anatole France
“I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.” – B. F. Skinner
“Fate means seeing the hand of God move clearly through your life, even with your eyes closed.” – Rusty Fischer
“Fate is a train roaring down the track of life. Sometimes you step off the track, and unless you look back over your shoulder and see the train go roaring past, you don’t know what you missed.” – Brenda Warneka
“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
“As we move through life, the force of fate creates events that we only appreciate when we reflect on our existence.” – Ronald Harmon
“Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.” – Lisa Kleypas
“Some people also feel that they have been dealt a bad hand by fate and relish in their poor me attitude for the rest of their life. What a waste.” – Byron Pulsifer
“Ask not what tomorrow may bring, but count as blessing every day that fate allows you.” – Horace
“As a Victorian, Churchill believed he could be master of his fate, and that faith sustained him, but everything we have learned about human motivation since then underscores the immensity of his undertaking.” – William Manchester
“Anyone who waded through the various articles, reports, and white papers from the period would conclude that the anxiety and anger expressed by Canadians stemmed from the widely held perception that many of Canada’s seniors are considerably poorer than the rest of the population, a fate that also awaits those who are still working.” – Bill Morneau
Final Thoughts
May these fate quotes make you think about who is responsible for your life and the things that happen.
Fate is all about the idea that the things meant to be for us will always find a way of coming to us and that some items are not meant to be. Fate cannot be taken for granted, and it is a beautiful guiding light in many people’s lives.
Some of life’s events are outside our control and can’t be predicted, prevented, or avoided. Maybe this in itself is fate. However, we can take each day one at a time and strive to make wise, kind choices. If that controls your future, it must be the best way to do so.
What’s your biggest takeaway from these fate quotes and sayings? Do you have any other insightful quotes to add? Let us know in the comment section below.