Destiny Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Destiny. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
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William Shakespeare
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One love, one heart, one destiny.
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Bob Marley
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Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.
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Steve Maraboli
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Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
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Jean de la Fontaine (Fables)
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The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.
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Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)
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The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.
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Jonathan Ames (My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays)
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Captain?" "Yeah?" "Do you think it was destiny that brought us together?" He squinted and, after a thoughtful moment, shook his head. "No. I'm pretty sure it was Cinder.
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Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
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It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
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Anonymous (The Bhagavad Gita)
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When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.
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Aristotle
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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.
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AnaΓ―s Nin
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There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...
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John Lennon
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Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
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Gloria Naylor
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Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
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William Jennings Bryan
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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
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Thomas Merton (Love and Living)
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There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.
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Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana)
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No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
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Gautama Buddha (Sayings of Buddha)
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We the mortals touch the metals, the wind, the ocean shores, the stones, knowing they will go on, inert or burning, and I was discovering, naming all the these things: it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
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Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)
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I told you. You don't love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.
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L.J. Smith
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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.
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Carlos Ruiz ZafΓ³n (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
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You are not the victim of the world, but rather the master of your own destiny. It is your choices and decisions that determine your destiny.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.
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Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
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Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.
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Christopher Markus
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Don't confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you!
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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Survive first. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later.
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Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
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You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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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.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.
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C.S. Lewis
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Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.
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Andrew Boyd (Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe)
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Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.
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Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
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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.
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Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
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A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ... a youth she's content to leave behind.... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it in her old age.... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..... a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored... A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... a feeling of control over her destiny... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... how to fall in love without losing herself.. EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... HOW TO QUIT A JOB, BREAK UP WITH A LOVER, AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... that she can't change the length of her calves, the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents.. EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... what she would and wouldn't do for love or more... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... whom she can trust, whom she can't, and why she shouldn't take it personally... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... where to go... be it to her best friend's kitchen table... or a charming inn in the woods... when her soul needs soothing... EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW... what she can and can't accomplish in a day... a month...and a year...
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Pamela Redmond Satran
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It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
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Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)
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I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you
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Kiersten White (The Chaos of Stars)
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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.
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Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
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I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
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Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?
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Garth Nix (Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1))
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To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.
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Stephen Hawking (Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays)
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Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
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Henry Miller
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In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world. Okay, not really. But there should be.
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James Patterson (The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, #1))
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Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
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J.K. Rowling
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I'm already crazy. I'm a fearless person. I think it creeps up on you. I don't think it can be stopped. If my destiny is to lose my mind because of fame, then that's my destiny. But my passion still means more than anything.
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Lady Gaga
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What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
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Jim Butcher (White Night (The Dresden Files, #9))
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I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.
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Coco Chanel
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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
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Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
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Even if things don't unfold the way you expected, don't be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.
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Daisaku Ikeda
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Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny--he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally--you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you.
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Osho
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Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
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Elizabeth Gilbert
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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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Martin Luther King Jr. (Letter from the Birmingham Jail)
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She would be brave. She would be heroic. She would make her own destiny.
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Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
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Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
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Jean-Paul Sartre
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Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
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Lao Tzu
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What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.
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AnaΓ―s Nin (The Diary of AnaΓ―s Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934)
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When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.
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Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
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If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.
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Thomas Merton
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All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
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SeΓ‘n O'Casey
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I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless them, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.
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Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
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Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.
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Heraclitus
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I knew I loved you before I met you I think I dreamed you into life I knew I loved you before I met you I have been waiting all my life
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Savage Garden
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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.
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Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
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Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?
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Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember)
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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.
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Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone)
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[...] almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of 'psst' that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
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Martin Heidegger
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Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman β€” a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
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Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
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Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
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If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading
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Gautama Buddha
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You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.
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Goldie Hawn
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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.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
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Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.
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Robin S. Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny)
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it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.
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Daisaku Ikeda
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Realize that if a door closed, it’s because what was behind it wasn’t meant for you.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
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Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
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It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.
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David Levithan
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The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise grows it under his feet.
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James Oppenheim
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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.
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Douglas Coupland
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when you meet that person. a person. one of your soulmates. let the connection. relationship. be what it is. it may be five mins. five hours. five days. five months. five years. a lifetime. five lifetimes. let it manifest itself the way it is meant to. it has an organic destiny. this way if it stays or if it leaves, you will be softer. from having been loved this authentically. souls come into. return. open. and sweep through your life for a myriad of reasons. let them be who. and what they are meant.
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Nayyirah Waheed
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Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
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Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, #6; Witches, #2))
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Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach. Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?
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Alan Moore (Watchmen)
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Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.
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Daisaku Ikeda
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Some people Never find the right kind of love you know, the kind that steals your breath away. Like diving into a snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace. An anxious hiccuping of hummingbirds wings. The kind that makes every terrible minute apart feel like hours. Days. Years. Some people flit from one insane possibility to the next. Never experincing the connection of two people. rocked by destiny. Never knowing what it means to love someone else, more than themselves. More than life itself, or the promise of something better. Beyond this world, More even (forgive me!) than god. Lucky me, I found the right kind of love. With the wrong person.
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Ellen Hopkins (Tricks (Tricks, #1))
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[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.
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Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
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You are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor. You have a history of victory.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.
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Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
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There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
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Albert Einstein
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For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.
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C. JoyBell C.
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The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.
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Louis-Ferdinand CΓ©line
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If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.
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Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
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Alec isn’t happy,” said Magnus, as if she hadn’t spoken. β€œOf course he isn’t,” Isabelle snapped. β€œJace—” β€œJace,” said Magnus, and his hands made fists at his sides. Isabelle stared at him. She had always thought that he didn’t mind Jace; liked him, even, once the question of Alec’s affections had been settled. Out loud, she said: β€œI thought you were friends.” β€œIt’s not that,” said Magnus. β€œThere are some people β€” people the universe seems to have singled out for special destinies. Special favors and special torments. God knows we’re all drawn toward what’s beautiful and broken; I have been, but some people cannot be fixed. Or if they can be, it’s only by love and sacrifice so great it destroys the giver.” Isabelle shook her head slowly. β€œYou’ve lost me. Jace is our brother, but for Alec β€” he’s Jace’s parabatai too —” β€œI know about parabatai,” said Magnus, his voice rising in pitch. β€œI’ve known parabatai so close they were almost the same person; do you know what happens, when one of them dies, to the one that’s left—” β€œStop it!” Isabelle clapped her hands over her ears, then lowered them slowly. β€œHow dare you, Magnus Bane,” she said. β€œHow dare you make this worse than it is —” β€œIsabelle.” Magnus’ hands loosened; he looked a little wide-eyed, as if his outburst had startled even him. β€œI am sorry. I forget, sometimes . . . that with all your self-control and strength, you possess the same vulnerability that Alec does.” β€œThere is nothing weak about Alec,” said Isabelle. β€œNo,” said Magnus. β€œTo love as you choose, that takes strength. The thing is, I wanted you here for him. There are things I can’t do for him, can’t give him . . .” For a moment Magnus looked oddly vulnerable. β€œYou have known Jace as long as he has. You can give him understanding I can’t. And he loves you.” β€œOf course he loves me. I’m his sister.” β€œBlood isn’t love,” said Magnus, and his voice was bitter. β€œJust ask Clary.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
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When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.
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Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
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You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you β€œsir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.
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Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)