"Destiny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her. Her fate is sealed; her path is marked out. There is neither turn nor winding in it, nor escape from the destiny to which it leads. She has taken the first step in it, and must follow it to the end. Look at the reckless and abandoned of her sex, who crowd our thoroughfares at night. Their fate must be her fate; an outcast—then the tenant of a public prison where her associates will be the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... distant all's well of our sentinels. Those foreign words bring back my grief; they remind me of what I sometimes forget in writing—that I am faraway, separated from you and from my child! Poor, beloved beings! what will be your destiny? Ah! if I could only send you, in time, that medal, which, by a fatal accident, I carried away with me from Warsaw, you might, perhaps, obtain leave to visit France, or at least to send our child there with Dagobert; for you know of what importance—But why add this sorrow to all the rest? ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... symphony by reason of its association with Napoleon Buonaparte, for it was inspired by Beethoven's belief—formed in those days when the soldier of the Revolution was regarded as the liberator of peoples and the enemy only of the old feudal order—that Napoleon was marked out by destiny to realise Plato's ideal of government. One recalls how the act of Napoleon in proclaiming himself Emperor shattered this illusion; how Beethoven erased the fallen hero's name from the title-page of his score, withheld the "Eroica" ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... of Crawford as the head of the Republican party in the State had enabled his friends to monopolize all the offices, and give direction to every political movement and fix the destiny of every political aspirant. Under this regime many had been summarily set aside, and were soured. The talents of Troup, Forsyth, Cobb, Berrien, Tatnal, and some others, pointed them out as men to be honored, because they honored the State. They seemed to hold a possessory ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... his father's ability and resolution, but none of his father's conscience. As the historian of that time declared, "he feared God but little, man not at all." He had Caesar's faith in destiny, and said to a boatman who hesitated to set off with him in a storm at his command, "Did you ever hear of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Dispatch carried at its masthead every afternoon one or more of such slogans as these: "Be a Delafield Booster," "Boost for more Industries," "Put Delafield on the Map," "Double Delafield in Half a Decade," "Delafield, the Darling of Destiny," "Watch Delafield Grow, but Don't Stop ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... into Wyllard's eyes. "It's their destiny: they're wanderers and strangers without a habitation: there's unrest in them. After a few months on the tundra mosses to gather strength and teach the young to fly, they'll unfold their wings to beat another passage before the icy gales. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... men really are, nor what they suffer. Besides, says he, let it be considered, that a man is a creature, who is created immortal, and a creature consequently that will find a compensation in futurity, for any seeming inequality in his destiny here; but the creatures of a poetical creator, are imaginary, and transitory; they have no longer duration than the representation of their respective fables, and consequently if they offend, they must be punished during that representation, and therefore we are very ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... said, lowering her voice and her eyes, after feeling well assured they had produced her effect,—"is it not fulfilling one's destiny to have rendered a ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... uttered. I have given my life, and shall welcome death almost as a boon. It is, perhaps, Heaven's will that my blood should indicate the pathway of my country to happiness and freedom. With what joy I accept this glorious destiny!"[31126]— ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sculptor's vivid fancy than a living, breathing mortal. Valentine was filled with indescribable sorrow as she gazed at him and realized that this wreck of noble, glorious manhood was the beloved of Zuleika's heart, the being with whose unhappy destiny that of Monte-Cristo's daughter was inextricably entwined. Oh! that by some miracle, such as the fabled divinities of old Olympus were said to have performed, he might be restored to reason and the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... vessels. Their hour of misfortune has long passed away. The victors have now no use for them in an inland lake. Some have already sunk, while others, dismantled and half-dismasted, are just above the water, waiting in shattered state that destiny which must sooner or later destroy the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... lad admires. It is true that the "best girl" varies from week to week if not from day to day, but this special regard for a member of the opposite sex announces the dawn of a simple sentiment that will, a few years later, blossom out into the real passion which may fix a life's destiny. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... correcting this central register, and photographing copies of its entries for transmission to the subordinate local stations, in response to their inquiries. So the inventory of the State would watch its every man and the wide world write its history as the fabric of its destiny flowed on. At last, when the citizen died, would come the last entry of all, his age and the cause of his death and the date and place of his cremation, and his card would be taken out and passed on to the universal pedigree, to a place ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... indeed the most memorable day of my life, for on that evening I began to think about myself, and my thoughts were strange and unhappy thoughts to me-what I was, what I was in the world for, what I wanted, what destiny was going to make of me! Or was it for me to do just what I wished, to shape my own destiny, as my elder brothers had done? It was the first time such questions had come to me, and I was startled at them. It was as though ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... to have their course, it is so destined," said the Master; "if they are not to have their course, it is so destined. What can Liau do against Destiny?" ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... be impossible for me to do that, as you will readily believe when you come to know my story; for, on this eventful evening there happened something which, somehow or other, thenceforth, whether owing to what visionary folk term "Destiny," or from its arising through some curious conjuncture of things beyond the limits of mere chance, appeared to exercise a mysterious influence on my life, affecting the whole tenor and ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... attracted this young surgeon. But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... proved unpopular with them, for it stabbed their vanity, and neither my prestige nor the novelty of the idea was sufficient salve. These Hans for centuries had believed and taught their children that they were a super-race, a race of destiny. Destined to Whom, for What, was not so clear to them; but nevertheless destined to "elevate" humanity to some sort of super-plane. Yet through these same centuries they had been busily engaged in the extermination of "weaklings," whom, by their very persecutions, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... said Mrs. Hemenway, "and I will stand behind you." She was inspired with the idea of making America in the high sense American and saw in the young genius a good ally. The chance was embraced and John Fiske after that dipped only fitfully into philosophical themes, writing, however, The Destiny of Man, The Idea of God, Cosmic Roots of Loveland Self-sacrifice, and Life Everlasting. He gave his main strength, to a thing worth while, the establishment in America of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Would he have served the world better ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... knowest that, then much more thou dost know, (The mermaid dances the floor upon) So do thou my destiny unto me show, And thus by thee shall my ...
— The Mermaid's Prophecy - and Other Songs Relating to Queen Dagmar • Anonymous
... light, or Shame. She was not made Through years or moons the inner weight to bear, Which colder hearts endure till they are laid By age in earth: her days and pleasures were Brief, but delightful—such as had not staid Long with her destiny; but she sleeps well[247] By the sea-shore, whereon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... persons, but the most probable account he received from Ali's son, a boy, who told him it was determined to put out his eyes, by the special advice of the priests, but the sentence was deferred until Fatima, the queen, then absent, had seen the white man. Mr. Park, anxious to know his destiny, went to the king and begged permission to return to Jarra. This was, however, flatly refused, as the queen had not yet seen him, and he must stay until she arrived, after which his horse would be restored, and he should be at liberty to return to Ludamar. Mr. Park appeared pleased; and without ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... brethren are anointed with the oil that was poured upon His head, even as the oil upon Aaron's locks percolated to the very skirts of his garments. Being anointed with the anointing which was on Him, all His people may claim an identity of nature, may hope for an identity of destiny, and are bound to a prolongation of part of His function and a similarity of character. If He by that anointing was made Prophet, Priest, and King for the world, all His children partake of these offices in subordinate ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... confidence. Yet the position which he had taken up was one which was well known to be bad. The late M. de Luxembourg had declared it so, and had avoided it. M. de Villeroy had been a witness of this, but it was his destiny and that of France that he should forget it. Before he took up this position he announced that it was his intention to do so to M. d'Orleans. M. d'Orleans said publicly to all who came to listen, that if M. de Villeroy did so he would be ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... D.C.L. (1823).—Essayist and writer on politics, etc. Three English Statesmen, Lectures on the Study of History, Rational Religion and Rationalistic Objections, The Political Destiny of Canada, Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, Revolution or Progress, etc.; books on Cowper, Miss ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... that do their own work are the strongest, the most numerous, and, taking one thing with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any other. They are the anomaly of our country,—the distinctive feature of the new society that we are building up here; and, if we are to accomplish our national destiny, that class must increase rather than diminish. I shall certainly do my best to answer the very sensible and pregnant questions of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... day an event took place in Holland, the effect of which on Gerard's destiny, no mortal at the time, nor even my intelligent reader ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... its own authority, and was sanctioned by the legislation. Communities have existed which were aristocratic from their earliest origin, owing to circumstances anterior to that event, and which became more democratic in each succeeding age. Such was the destiny of the Romans, and of the Barbarians after them. But a people, having taken its rise in civilisation and democracy, which should gradually establish an inequality of conditions until it arrived at inviolable privileges ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... recollection of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate, till I am bid to revive them. But experience, alas! sadly reminds me how impossible this is, and evinces an opinion which I have long entertained that there is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature. You have drawn me, dear Madame, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple Fact. Misconstrue ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... gratitude for the infinite kindness they have bestowed upon me, never to act in opposition to their wishes; and without their consent, I should regard the inestimable boon you desire to confer upon me, not as a good but as an evil fortune. Should it ever be my happy destiny to be acknowledged by them as worthy of you, be assured that my heart shall be yours; but till that time comes, or should it never come, let it console you to know that the dearest wish of my soul will ever be that you may know every blessing which ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it is because I am inclined to brave destiny, not to quail at it. The wretch can ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... temper and deficiency in charm; resolute to make up for these; thinking last of himself: Fleeming was in some ways the very man to have made a noble, uphill fight of an unfortunate marriage. In other ways, it is true he was one of the most unfit for such a trial. And it was his beautiful destiny to remain to the last hour the same absolute and romantic lover, who had shown to his new bride the flag-draped vessels in the Mersey. No fate is altogether easy; but trials are our touchstone, trials overcome our reward; and it was given ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been found in 1784, would have saved the Southwest also to freedom, with almost certain promise of result in early freeing of the whole country. Just two or three votes in the Continental Congress,—on such small hinges does the destiny of nations seem ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... turned round to salute and view the Company. The Scaffold was circular, so that there was no end of the Delightful Prospect. It seem'd a Glory of Beauty which shone around the admiring Beholders. Our Lovers soon perceived the Stars which were to Rule their Destiny, which sparkled a lustre beyond all the inferiour Constellations, and seem'd like two Suns to distribute Light to all the Planets in that Heavenly Sphere. Leonora knew her Slave by his Badge and blushed till the Lilies and Roses in her cheeks had resemblance to the Plume ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... felt himself to be her master: a position which, as you know, I was myself aspiring to occupy. For a few minutes, then, I stood a prey to feelings of the bitterest wrath and despair; then I grew calm, realizing that with this letter in my possession I was virtually the arbitrator of her destiny. Some men would have sought her there and then and, by threatening to place it in her uncle's hand, won from her a look of entreaty, if no more; but I—well, my plans went deeper than that. I knew she would have to be in extremity before I could hope to win her. She must feel herself ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song. ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live. And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing, to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only truth. That . . . and ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... knew that he had juggled cleverly with the admitted facts of the case and yet her interest in his confession waxed stronger every moment. What an odd fascination this man exercised upon her. She felt drawn toward him as to some destiny she could not possibly escape. And when he spoke of Alban, then he ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... recompensed elsewhere by an encouraging echo? Have we not here, on the contrary, the image of human life? we are always aspiring toward an ideal more elevated than that which we realize. We are always precursors, and it becomes us to accept humbly what that destiny holds both ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... doubtful whether such stories are products of European fancy, their leading ideas seeming to be little in keeping with the religious beliefs—whether of classic times, or of Teutonic, Slavic, or Celtic antiquity—respecting either an overruling destiny, or a triad of Fates or Norns. But in India a belief in a personal "luck" has prevailed from very early times; and such stories as "The Man who went to seek his Fate" (No. 12), appear there to be as indigenous as in Europe they seem to be exotic. The Servian story, for instance, of the man ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... be predicted as inferior to those of Agrippa. Being persuaded, however, after much importunity, to declare it, Theogenes started up from his seat, and paid him adoration. Not long afterwards, Augustus was so confident of the greatness of his destiny, that he published his horoscope, and struck a silver coin, bearing upon it the sign of Capricorn, under the influence ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... have postponed the U-boat war, and accepted American intervention, in order to improve our diplomatic position in Washington, before having recourse to the ultima ratio. It seems to have been our destiny that all our most important decisions of the war were the outcome of military and not of political considerations. On the Entente side, the converse was always true, and that is why, though it suffered many military reverses, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... this; and if I bear no child, her place will be left unfilled, and the places of her children, and of their children, and so on until some day the whole great plan of Paracosma fails of whatever its destiny was to be." Her whisper grew very faint and fearful. "It is destruction, but I love ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... fetch the India fleet, now tacked, and laid up directly for them. In the meantime, the English vessels were preparing for action: the clearing of their lumbered decks was the occasion of many a coop of fowls, or pig of the true China breed, exchanging their destiny for a watery grave. Fortunately, there were no passengers. Homeward-bound China ships are not encumbered in that way, unless to astonish the metropolis with such monstrosities as the mermaid, or as the Siamese twins, coupled by nature like two hounds (separated lately indeed ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... beings, who seemed to have dropped from another planet, and by their superior knowledge and more deadly weapons overcome the hitherto unconquerable nations, though a mere handful of men in comparison to the swarms of his own countrymen. He felt himself to be the victim of a destiny from which nothing could save him. All peace, power, and security seemed to be gone from him, and in despair he shut himself up in his palace, refusing food, and trying by prayers and sacrifices to wring some favour from his gods. But the oracles were dumb. Then he ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... results of the Battle of Hastings may have been of less importance to the world than were those of some other great battles, the struggle has, in the long run, had a greater influence upon the destiny of mankind than any other similar event that has ever taken place. That admixture of Saxon, Danish, and British races which had come to be known under the general name of English, was in most respects far behind the rest of Europe. The island was, as it had always been,—except during the rule ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Girdle, which they play with while they talk of the fair Person remember'd by each respective Token. According to the Representation of the Matter from my Letters, the Company appear like so many Players rehearsing behind the Scenes; one is sighing and lamenting his Destiny in beseeching Terms, another declaring he will break his Chain, and another in dumb-Show, striving to express his Passion by his Gesture. It is very ordinary in the Assembly for one of a sudden to rise and make a Discourse concerning his Passion ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... softness of your waving hair, That curious paleness which enchants me so, And all your delicate strength and youthful air, Destiny ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... sitting with my mother in the little parlour behind the shop, she knitting, I think, or sewing—I am not sure which—and I with my legs thrust out before me and my hands in my pockets, outwardly idling and inwardly cursing at my destiny. Every now and then my mother glanced at me over the edge of her work and sighed; but it may have been, and I hope it was, because she found her ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... state, too. They came to the meeting with her. Everything appeared strange to her, and when she went home she did not know really what to say. She and her brother and nephew went up stairs, and coming down she thought, it may be that the destiny of their souls depends on what I say now. When she entered the parlor she found them laughing and joking about the meeting. She put on a serious face and said, "I don't think we should laugh at it. Suppose Mr. Moody had come to ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... game of consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not least. But the average sermon flees the point, disporting itself in that eternity of which we know, and need to know, so little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill- hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possible, for the women of that State, the liberal laws we have secured for ourselves. Ohio, too, is soon to revise her Constitution, and we trust she will not be far behind New York in recognizing the full equality of woman. We who have grasped the idea of woman's destiny, her power and influence, the trinity of her existence as woman, wife, and mother, can most earnestly work for her elevation to that high position that it is the will of God she should ever fill. Though we have not yet realized ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not necessary. You need only take a sheet of paper and write at the top "A Ballad," then begin like this, "Heigho, alack, my destiny!" or "the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then on the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae, voropae, gop, gop!" or something of that kind. And the thing's done. Print it and publish it. The Little ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... through life and death, was in its infancy a free swimming animal, hovering from place to place upon delicate ciliae, till, having sown its wild oats, it settled down in life, built itself a good stone house, and became a landowner, or rather a glebae adscriptus, for ever and a day. Mysterious destiny! - yet not so mysterious as that of the free medusoid young of every polype and coral, which ends as a rooted tree of horn or stone, and seems to the eye of sensuous fancy to have literally degenerated into a vegetable. Of them you must read for yourself in Mr. Gosse's book; ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... tripartite form, compared with the other petals. Certainly, if I may trust the vessels, the simple labellum of Gymnadenia consists of three organs soldered together. Forgive me for writing at such length; a very brief answer will suffice. I am desperately interested in the subject: the destiny of the whole human race is as nothing to the course of vessels ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... sits on a black throne, surrounded by a court of evil spirits and genii. The intermediate layers are the abode of divinities and spirits of different degrees of light and darkness; most of them are the spirits of deceased men. All spirits exert influence on the destiny of man for good or evil; the children of men are unable to soften or to subdue these spiritual beings, whence the necessity of Shamans or Priests, who alone possess power over ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... a charm is wound, Rolling darkly round and round, Ne'er beginning—ending never; Woe betide this house for ever! Thou art mine through life—in death I'll receive thy latest breath. Plighted is thy vow to me, Mine thy doom, thy destiny, Sealed with blood; this endless token, Like the spell, shall ne'er ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Froude was engaged to be married, and had a passionate love of the country. His keen, clear, rapid intelligence would probably have served him well in commercial affairs when once he had learnt to understand them. He was reserved for a very different destiny, and he gratefully declined Mr. Darbishire's offer. Nevertheless, his stay at Manchester as private tutor had some share in his mental development. He made acquaintance with interesting persons, such as Harriet Martineau, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Gaskell, and William Edward ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... this—and I believe it to be a legitimate inference from the legal position of this Flamen, and his permanent state of taboo—then I think we may see a great religious change in the era of the "calendar of Numa." Inspired with new ideas of the duty and destiny of the new city of the four regions, a priest-king, doubtless with the help and advice of a council, according to the true Roman fashion, put an end for ever to the reign of the old magician-kingship, but preserved ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to her. Why? Why? He searched himself with a desperate earnestness, but he could find no answer to his questioning. In himself, as in her, there had come no change. She was still to him all that she ever had been—the star of his destiny, the pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, to guide him on his path. Where, then, the fine, pure fervor that should, at thought of her, whirl him on high and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... thereby cut himself off from all contact and connection with that rejected Saviour, but he still sustains a relation to Him; and the message that he has refused to believe, is exercising an influence upon his character and his destiny. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... beautiful women of history, none has left us such convincing proofs of her charms as Cleopatra, for the tide of Rome's destiny, and, therefore, that of the world, turned aside because of her beauty. Julius Caesar, whose legions trampled the conquered world from Canopus to the Thames, capitulated to her, and Mark Antony ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... but I thought you would like it—and you will remember your cousin when you use it. Ralph, you have chosen to work out your own destiny, and for many a night your uncle fumed over it until at last he said that the child who fought for scraps in the gutter grew to be worth any two of the spoon-fed. You know how fond he is of forcible simile, and he frowned when I suggested ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... with awful meaning and strange emphasis on poor Wilton's ear. Wilton had never heard of the Bath Kol, he knew nothing of the power that wields the tongue amid the chances of destiny; but fear made him superstitious, and, forgetting his usual dissimulation, he looked up at Kenrick aghast, without wiping away the traces which unwonted tears ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... girl, beautiful, even to perfection. What character, what firmness, what power to love could be read in those features! What hate, what revulsion, what undying energy for the true and the right were there! A fair, young creation,—so fair and so young, it seemed impossible that her destiny should be an unhappy one: yet her destiny was unhappy. The shadow on the brow, the melancholy which softened the clear hazel eye, the slightest possible compression of the mouth, said,—"Destined to misfortune!" Were these actual portraits of living persons, or at least ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... be full of interest to all mankind. She not only cools the heated brow, cheers the drooping heart, and strews life's pathway with flowers of peace, but she deals with man's eternal destiny. She will smooth the rough places all along his journey of life, and when he has come down to the end, it is she that will bear him across the valley and welcome him to the home ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... be forgotten. Lords, squires, and cockneys may pass away, but a time will scarcely come when Childe Harold and that ode will be forgotten. He was a poet, after all, and he must have known it; a real poet, equal to—to—what a destiny! Rank, beauty, fashion, immortality,—he could not be unhappy; what a difference in the fate of men—I wish I could think he was unhappy . . ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... are the influences at play in human life. Acting and reacting on the free will of man they are ever at work moulding his character and shaping his destiny. Like the waves of an incoming tide they are beating the shores of our heart; their triumph is to carry away our liberty on their ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... over again. The beautiful allegory in which men are likened to birds snared and caged until set free by the Angel of Death might be met with anywhere in the immortal Dialogues. The tractate on Love is a commentary on the Symposium; and the essay on Destiny is Greek in spirit without a trace of Oriental fatalism, as you may judge from the concluding sentence, which I leave you as his special message: "Take heed to the limits of your capacity and you will arrive ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... are, therefore, to be viewed as exponents of early Grecian philosophy,—of all that the early Greeks believed, and felt, and conjectured, respecting the universe and its government, and respecting the social relations, duties, and destiny of mankind,—and their influence upon national character was great. As a Scotch poet and scholar of our own day ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and on opening a new reach of the stream, a somewhat extraordinary scene of fishing presented itself. It was not like Murphy's fishing, the result of a fertile invention, but the consequence of the evil destiny which presided over all the proceedings of Handy Andy. The fishing-party in the boats beheld another fishing-party on shore, with this difference in the nature of what they sought to catch, that while ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... government certificates are never to be paid, that the day of specie payments is never to return. And it matters not in what form they are issued. . . . Through whatever changes they pass, their ultimate destiny ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... incurably too small to evoke the heroic in men, that the Church is in the world. She is in the world to change the world, so that its whole extent may be filled with the glory of God, and may become worthy of the eternal destiny of the souls of men. Hers is a high and costly venture. She has strongholds to storm—the entrenchments where the forces of private-mindedness and apathy and money-worship are dug in. In the attempt ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, 'Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack' is, if I remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers to the Treasury Bench, I feel sure you will use none; while, as for Lord Brougham's genuflexions, we may agree that to emulate them would cost Lord Haldane an effort. These and even far less flagrant or flamboyant tricks of virtuosity have ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... fate was spun, and men who thought they were directing the destiny of the world were merely caught in those woven threads like puppets tied to strings and made to dance. It was the old Dance of Death which has happened before in the folly ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... written to him, with the strange fixed idea that he was to return to her one day. There was something very winning and lovable about the poor creature who had lived such a hard life at home, and had suffered so keenly. It was a comfort to think that she would go back to the Community. What happier destiny could she hope for? Would she take care of his dog for him when she went back? They had all promised to be kind to his pet animals in his absence; but the dog was fond of Mellicent; he would be happier with Mellicent than with the rest of them. And his little tame ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... of health; she was well, she was independent, she could, when it seemed good to her, get up and go out and join in the life of other people. While as for herself ... and again the feeling of impotent misery, of rebellion against her own destiny, came over Lady Gore like a wave whose strength she was powerless to resist. For since the rheumatic fever which five years ago had left her practically an incurable invalid, the effort to accept her fate still needed to be constantly renewed; ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... have said—it's for your gude." So exeunt Mrs. Glibbans, Miss Mally, and the two young ladies. "Her bark's waur than her bite," said Mrs. Craig, as she returned to her husband, who felt already some of the ourie symptoms of a henpecked destiny. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... the reason that I declined to tamper with your destiny is that I should be irresistibly compelled to tell you ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... against his mother's side, sheltered by her embracing arms, safe and happy in the quietude of her maternal care, he must have looked out upon the passing show with wonder and pleasure, while she instilled into him the lessons of wisdom and the warnings of destiny. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... get for me lessons in drawing in return for his board. He was a constitutional reformer, a radical as radicalism was then possible, had become an atheist with Robert Dale Owen, indignant at the treatment accorded him by destiny, and was au fond an honest and philanthropic man. He taught me the simplest rudiments of portrait and landscape in water-color, and of perspective, of which he was master, and, as he failed to find a field for his phonographic ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident. Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities, feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... pointed at one end to accommodate the snout. The live bundles were deposited on the galleries, and on the fifth day they were lying in rows and heaps, sixty-six in number, awaiting their ultimate destiny. The festival was now about to begin in earnest and an air of expectancy was evident in the faces of the natives. After the performance of the melah and the dance of the blians, and these were a daily feature of the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... not,"—he rejoined—"No created thing has a right to complain of its destiny. It finds itself Here,—and the fact that it IS Here is a proof that there is a purpose for its existence. What that purpose is we do not know yet, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... is reared to believe that the plurality-wife system as it is delicately called here is strictly right; and in linking her destiny with a man who has twelve wives, she undoubtedly considers she is doing her duty. She loves the man, probably, for I think it is not true, as so many writers have stated, that girls are forced to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... it had a hole in it, which seemed to clinch the matter. I sent for the packer the moment they were out of the house, and had the things boxed and away before they could change their minds. When I showed J—— the money, he said I was wasting my time writing, that he was sure I had a larger destiny. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... letting fall their goblets in each unruly attempt. And because Noodle wound leniently at the rope, willing that they should have their fill, at the last gasp they were able to send the bucket empty to the top. It was the last staving off of destiny that lay in their power to make; thereafter wine ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... arising from the tone of thought of the dominant races in the two, the more speculative Greeks being chiefly occupied with purely theological questions, while the more practical Roman mind devoted itself rather to subjects connected with the nature and destiny of man. In differences such as these there was nothing irreconcilable: the members of both communions professed the same forms of belief, rested their faith on the same divine persons, were guided by the same standard of morals, and were animated by the same ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... negotiation of a treaty, and the modus vivendi, which is designed to serve as a temporary substitute for one. Executive agreements become of constitutional significance when they constitute a determinative factor of future foreign policy and hence of the country's destiny. Within recent decades, in consequence particularly of our participation in World War II and our immersion in the conditions of international tension which have prevailed both before and after this war, Presidents have entered into agreements with other governments some of which have approximated ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... she was named) shall never perish on the seas; the place where she was built, shall behold her fall in pieces of herself. Might it please Almighty God," continued he, "that the same could be said concerning that vessel which put to sea with us! But we shall be witnesses too soon of her unhappy destiny." At that very instant appeared the signs, which were to begin the verification of the prophecy; the whirlwind was dissipated, and the sea grew calm. Not long afterwards, they beheld the merchandize and dead bodies floating on ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... iron gates upon the plain; A wretched, graveless ghost, whose wailing chill Came to thy darkened door imploring thee; Yearning for burial like my brother slain; - And all was dared for love and piety! This thought will nerve again thy virgin hand To serve its purpose and its destiny.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a woman to marry him, he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... consummate actor, ready and unscrupulous in imposing on others, but I see no reason to distrust the genuineness of this particular outburst, seeing that it is not the only instance of his referring to the guidance of his star, as a literal vision and not as a mere phrase, and that his belief in destiny was notorious. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... the knee But live as they were born, unyoked and free. Now, in the bosom of a distant land These warriors sleep, for such is God's command. The Fates in all decree, and have their will, And mortals must their destiny fulfill. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... say seemed endangered. The Indians were really less to be feared than at any time before. They were weaker, and the whites were stronger. They were striving against destiny; and though their fate was sealed with the blood of their enemies, their fate was sealed. All the chances that had favored them had favored them in vain, and neither their wily courage nor their pitiless despair availed them against the people who outnumbered ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... to distinguish myself like either of those individuals, or even like my friend here. However, a time may come—we are not yet buried; and whensoever my hour arrives, I hope I shall prove myself equal to my destiny, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Why should anybody be surprised? It's surely the most natural thing in the world for a woman, even a very plain woman, to marry. I have always heard that marriage is woman's destiny, and though I don't altogether believe that, still I see no special reason why I should never marry if I wish to. And ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... with destiny, yonder—do you not see, gentlemen?" Burr resumed. "Those who march with me are in alliance with natural events. This republic is split now, at this very moment. It must follow its own fate. If the flag of Spain were west of it ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... on me, as if he had done it for years. Before me there must have been somebody else. Carlos? Carlos, no doubt. And in this placing me in that position there was apparent the work of death, the work of life, of time, the pathetic realization of an inevitable destiny. He talked a little disjointedly, with the uncertain swaying of a shadow on his thoughts, as if the light of his mind had flickered like an expiring lamp. I remember that once he asked me, in a sort of senile ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in it;—one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,—said, in speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and met everywhere, 'This young German will never gain for himself the title ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... irritated; it was so admirable of her, a little childish, infinitely womanly and devoted and fine—and I see now how pathetic. But I could not afford to succumb to her. I wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, and this reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pursuit of a fixed end when as a matter of fact I had a very doubtful end and an aim as yet by no means fixed, was ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... hair was YELLOW; but considering the curiosity which this young lady has excited, perhaps it may be as well to transcribe his description at length, especially as he appears to have taken some pains on it, and more particularly as her destiny seems at present to promise that the interest for her is likely to be revived by another unhappy ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... qualified than you are to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy. Come out West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley; let us make it dead-sure, and I tell you the Atlantic slope and Pacific shores will follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the main trunk! We have done much; still much remains to be done. Time and time's influences are all with us; we could almost afford to sit still and let these influences work. Even in the seceded States your word now would ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... home and was weather-bound for a day, did lament his sad destiny, and mutter half-intelligible nonsense of what he would not rather do than descend to such a melancholy existence; but in all his complainings he never made Kate discontented with her lot, or desire anything ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... 'that I have to call in Lamb's Conduit Street to buy something for my sister. I shall just be in time.' Baruch went as far as Lamb's Conduit Street with her. He, too, would have determined his own destiny if she had uttered the word, but the power to proceed without it was wanting and he fell back. He left her at the door of the shop. She bid him good-bye, obviously intending that he should go no further with her, and he shook hands with her, taking her hand again and shaking it ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... auto-comradeship have always drawn grins, jokes, fleers, and nudges, from the auto-comradeless. It is time the latter should know that the joke is really on him; for he is the most forlorn of mankind. The other is never at a loss. He is invulnerable, being one whom "destiny may not surprise nor death dismay." But the porcupine is liable at any moment to be deserted by associates who are bored by his sharp, hollow quills. He finds himself the victim of a paradox which decrees that the hermit shall "find his crowds in solitude" and never be alone; but that the flocker ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... her husband, or was this indignation a little due also to her liking for the world which so fell in with her inclinations? The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossible wholly to condemn or wholly to approve. If Margaret's destiny had been united with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernment in such a case as this? It is such a pity that for most people there is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Chance—Destiny, call it what you will—brought about the greatest catastrophe that had so far obtained in the Guernsey ranks. Major Davey moved his party over an area—at about 11 in the morning of a warm, sunny Sunday—coming in for a spell of shelling extraordinary ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... There is something fateful in that terrible sternness, something which very well excites horror while imposing respect, and especially when forced to submit to superior force; and when vanquished, there is something grand in the capacity such a character possesses for submitting to destiny, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... And so the Hegelian statement through the Hegelian dialectic turns to its opposite—all that is real in the course of human history becomes in the process of time irrational and is, therefore, according to its destiny, irrational, and has from the beginning inherited want of rationality, and everything which is reasonable in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict the apparent ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... he implied that there were better things than material success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come back to the village. But he had not. He had, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... rebellion was unexpectedly, amazingly successful. The Sultan, after vainly sacrificing his chief councillors to the fury of the mob, was himself dethroned by Halil, and Mahmud I. appointed Sultan in his stead. For the next six weeks the ex-costermonger held the destiny of the Ottoman Empire in his hands till, on November 25th, he and his chief associates were treacherously assassinated in full Divan by the secret command, and actually in the presence of, ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrant and with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean. Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to do with his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose where to strike or than a saddled beast could choose its rider, aroused an intense opposition. Erasmus argued that damnation given for inevitable crimes would make God unjust, and Thomas More blamed Luther ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... mind it at all,' answered Gladys in a still, quiet voice. Her heart cried out against her unhappy destiny; but one so desolate, so helpless and forlorn, may not choose. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... do not understand the ways of destiny. Why you and I have to suffer this torture I cannot say. I can see nothing in our lives that deserves such punishment. Heaven knows best. Why we have met and loved, only to undergo such anguish, is a puzzle I cannot solve. There is only one ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... less free offered no temptation and presented no delusion to the plain people who, side by side, in friendly competition, wrought for the ennoblement and dignity of man, for the solution of the problem of free government, and for the achievement of the grand destiny awaiting the land which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... to forty-two most men have fulfilled their destiny; those who have had within them the ability to rise have risen; the weak, the wastrels, the mediocrities have shaken down into their appointed places. Even the bummer has his own particular bit of wall in front of the saloon and his own particular ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... "that this is exactly an ideal place for luncheon, but we can have it here if you like, and in some ways I'm rather inclined to. You never know what may happen if you put things off. Last time the but was snatched out of our mouths by a callous destiny just as it was beginning to smell really good. By the way, Jimmy, what did you do with ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham |
