Destiny

“ That being the aim of the summons, that being the destiny that is held out before us all, ought not that destiny and the prospect of what we may be in the future, to fling some beams of guiding brightness on to the present? ”

“ I thought, so far as I can recollect my thoughts after so many years, that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart’s desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers. ”

“ For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most perverted, there runs visible, though fine and threadlike, the chain of destiny, which has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-good ”

“ Above man and his works he saw the heavy hand of destiny, ever guiding and controlling, ever moving its creature forward to the inevitable fate that all the centuries had placed in store for the helpless captive, marching shackled to the block. ”

“ As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days, our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible, that you can cut with a knife! ”

“ But while I draw this impassable circle around me, and confine myself within the bounds of present existence, this small point of time, which I was in danger of neglecting in useless researches, becomes the more important to me. What you call the chief end and aim of my existence concerns me no longer. I cannot escape my destiny; I cannot promote its consummation; but I know, and firmly believe, that I am here to accomplish some end, and that I do accomplish it. But the means which nature has chosen to fulfil my destiny are so much the more sacred to me ”

“ And destiny, steadfast in trifles, Is steadfast for better or worse In great things, it crushes and stifles, And swallows the hopes that we nurse. Men wiser than we are may wonder, When the future they cling to so fast, To the roll of that destiny's thunder, Goes down with the wrecks of the past. The past! the dead past! that has swallow'd All the honey of life and the milk, Brighter dreams than mere pastimes we've follow'd, Better things than our scarlet or silk ”

“ Because your majesty's station is exalted above that of other men; because God has blessed you with a noble heart, that is worthy of your destiny—the destiny which gives you the power of making other mortals happy. ”

“ With a dark and shifting near future, and a bright and fixed ultimate destiny, what is the true, the only wisdom? Not to pry into the fogs and thickets round about, or to stand still for fear of what may next occur in the path ”

“ Again have we been reminded that the whole course of human life and destiny hinges often upon a single circumstance, and that in the loom of fate the breaking of a single strand is adequate to mar forever life's golden cloth. ”

“ What is the end, the final destiny of the individual? Does he perish at death, or does he enter into another state of being; and under what conditions of happiness or woe does he exist there? What is the end, the final aim of the great whole, that far-off divine event towards which the whole creation moves? It is vain to tell man not to ask these questions. ”

“ Life or Death are his to give, and the trembling of the balance one way or the other is to be guided and controlled by his [274] unerring eye, his unerring brain, and his skilled, infallible hand. He holds the balances of Fate—he guides and controls Destiny, and knows his power and glories in it. ”

“ Sooner or later success will be ours. I feel it. I have faith in my destiny. I look forward to the future as confidently as I expect the sun to rise this morning to dispel the darkness. We shall have obstacles to grapple with and obloquy to face ”

“ Between them the principal distinction seems to be one of size, and at present we are not in a position to say which may be the most important, the issue of the smallest of unrecorded causes, or of the travelling of the great worlds. The destiny of a single human soul shaped or directed by the one, for aught we know, may be of more weight and value than that of a multitude of hoary universes naked of life and spirit. ”

“ And, giving a great leap, his heart began to thrash with the excitement of a chase all but completed, with the foreknowledge that, in the next few minutes, destiny was making, life and death were being weighed, the balances of fate about to tip! ”

“ We give our destiny from our own hands,
And trust to those most frail of all frail things,
The chances of humanity. ”

“ And what do men whose destiny is to live for ever want but something that shall go with them through all changes of condition, and, like a light in the midst of the darkest tunnel, shall burn in the passage between this and the other world, and shall never be taken away from them? We want a Person to be everything to us. ”

“ So doth the destined minute destroy with a flash the hoarded arrogance of ages; and the destined hand doeth what creation failed to perform; and 'tis by order, destiny, and preordainment, that the works of this world come to pass. ”

“ And the divinity that had shaped them at last, acting and reacting and giving circumstance a soul, had been only that mysterious divinity that makes human beings what they are. There was truth in the saying that destiny is only character under its other name. ”

“ And blessed is that nation alone. Here is the solution of the question of our destiny. It is in making the Lord the God of our country, that we are safe—that we are prosperous—that our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. Our destiny is left to ourselves. ”

“ Then I fancied a destiny, which only my mind conceived, an invincible passion nourished only by my own fancy, and creating, and I may almost say lending to a man worthless in himself, the qualities of perfection, which I dreamed in the ideals of my poetry ... ”

“ Having once come to this resolution, we cheerfully shared together the labours of the field. One in heart and purpose, we dared remain true to ourselves, true to our high destiny as immortal creatures, in our conflict with temporal and physical wants. ”

“ And to this hope is added the positive prophecy and promise, that the world shall be again brought into a state of goodness and joy, and the end be like the beginning. Now, this view throws a cheerful light both over our individual existence, and also over the world and the destiny of man. ”

“ Finally, from all our fiery trials we shall see the genius of our land emerge, tried indeed by fire, yet having gained fire's purity; we shall see that genius beginning, as yet with halting speech, to utter its most marvelous secret of the soul of man. We shall try at least to gain clear sight of our great destiny, and thereby of the like destiny of universal man. ”

“ For we know all the old earth stories;—of love, of war, of adventure, of wealth, we know pretty well the beginning and the end,—we read in our histories of nations that were, but now are not, and we feel that we shall in due time go the same way with them,—that the wheel of Destiny spins on in the same round always, and that nothing—nothing can alter its relentless and monotonous course. ”

“ They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear. ”

“ I do not mean by destiny that, by some divine or internal power, our actions assume a certain shape. Even atheists may admit destiny. Worldly events are the inevitable outcome of natural laws and man's character; man's character is the result of mental and natural laws. Therefore destiny is the result of mental and natural laws; but those rules are called destiny, because they are beyond man's comprehension. ”

“ The good or bad result which proceeds from the accomplished acts of successful activity, is expressed by the word destiny.
5. The wished for and unwished for consequences resulting from the good and bad deeds of human activity, are termed the effects of destiny by people.
6. Human activity which is the only cause of some unavoidable future consequence, is called as destiny by the majority of mankind.
7. Truly, O Rághava! destiny though void as vacuity, appears as real to some body, who thinks it to be an active agent, while others know it to be inactive. ”

“ The incomprehensible purpose of destiny may single out any one of them, or any group of them, at any [163] time if they trend toward ill-advised and unhealthy disguise of the soul, which has been bequeathed to them, and, mayhap, they shall fade like the leaves of the forest, until they die. ”

“ It is a pledge of the destiny appointed for us that the Creator has set in our hearts an infinite standard of achievement, judged by which our past attainments seem always insignificant, and the goal never nearer. ”

“ You can no more look destiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny is grey. ”

“ Carve as we will the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny constantly reappears in it. ”

“ God of heaven! and is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason, or after he has lost it? ”

“ Those that were shown the illusionary vision of the world in the beginning, the world was written as their destiny. These people came into the world and made every effort to attain the material world. ”

“ There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives, notwithstanding that saying of the Stoics, 'Volentem ducit, nolentem trahit'. ”

“ But no earthly foot can step between a man and his destiny. ”

“ Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it. ”

“ Think you I bear the shears of destiny? Have I commandment on the pulse of life? ”

“ We doubt not the destiny of our country—that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points. ”

“ We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose. ”

“ We may choose to obey God, or to disobey; we may seek His will, or our own. The one is the way of life; the other, of death, and nothing can alter the facts; they are part of the laws of the universe. Our destiny is in our own hands, to make or to mar. ”

“ But these faculties, in envisaging the past or the ideal, envisage the eternal, and the man in whose mind they predominate is to that extent detached in his affections from the world of flux, from himself, and from his personal destiny. ”

“ That is, He claimed that the life which we live here so fixes the destiny of men that eternity will carry its impress. Hence the urgency and the supreme importance of this one life to all men. The universal succession, according to His teaching, is life, death, resurrection, judgment, and eternal reward. ”

“ This thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers. ”