"Fatalist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... superficial argument to say that if a man holds the views of a fatalist he will therefore cease to strive, and will wait resignedly for what fate may send him. The objector forgets that among the other things fated is that we of northern blood SHOULD strive and should NOT sit down with folded hands. But when a man has striven, when he has done all he knows, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... not a fatalist in the sense you mean," returned his friend. "Everything has been fixed from ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... and wrong. Although, however, error on this side is infinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world with impunity; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters we have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have given the fatalist a vantage ground of real truth which we ought to have considered and allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enter briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of life are our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what they say to us; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... "bad man" he cannot content himself with mere disapproval. Take, for example, his friends the murderers, Haggart and Thurtell. He shows Haggart as an ambitious lad too full of life, "with fine materials for a hero." He calls the fatalist's question: "Can an Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?"—nonsense, saying: "The greatest victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those unruly passions which are not convenient to the time and place." ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... are a fatalist, Unorna," observed her companion, still stroking and twisting his beard. "It is strange that we should differ upon so many fundamental questions, you and I, and yet be such good ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... a pretty little moral," said the Fatalist, "for it certainly proves that do what we will, we cannot get away from our natures. It was inherent in that man's nature to tend bees. Bee-ing was the occupation chosen for him by Fate, and had the beneficent Fairy changed him a dozen times, ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... The Fatalist is not calm. He is the coward slave of his environment, hopelessly surrendering to his present condition, recklessly indifferent to his future. He accepts his life as a rudderless ship, drifting on the ocean of time. He has no compass, no chart, no known port to which he is sailing. ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... fervor and boundless faith are proverbial—so much so that some men call him a fatalist; whilst others say, like Festus, "Thou art beside thyself." Neither of these judgments is true, though it is certainly true that, from a desire to oblige others, Gordon has sometimes made errors in judgment that ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... purpose of distributing the prizes at the great examination, and when you placed on my head the laurel- crown, which has since been followed by others, you said, 'May it bring you happiness!' It is commonly believed that I am a fatalist; it is therefore very natural that I should not have forgotten my first coronation, and that it is still fresh in my memory. It would afford me much pleasure to be of service to you; besides, you can be useful to me. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... but a fatalist, yet he had a happy and useful way of taking short views of life. In times of extreme depression he used to say to himself, "Things seem black just now, but I know when I get over the trouble I shall look over the black gap of misery ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... is clearly evidenced in the letters to his brother, but, heartened by the success which had at last crowned his efforts, he buckled on his armor ready to do battle to such foes, both within and without, as should in the future assail him. Fatalist as we must regard him, he believed in his star; or rather he went forward with sublime faith in that God who had thus far guarded him from evil, and in his own good time had given him the victory, and such a victory! For twelve years he had fought on through trials and privations, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his hands upon his hips, and his head bent forward. 'I am a fatalist,' he replied, 'and just now (if you insist on it) an experimentalist. Talking of which, by the bye, who painted out the schooner's name?' he said, with mocking softness, 'because, do you know? one thinks ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cool head. His religion had done one thing for him: it had made him a fatalist, and ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... suicide; the solution of that awkward resolve—are all simply delightful. Extravagant as the thing is, its brevity and the throng of incidents and jokes prevent it from becoming in the least tedious. The pessimist-fatalist Mr. Toobad, with his "innumerable proofs of the temporary supremacy of the devil," and his catchword "the devil has come among us, having great wrath," appears just enough, and not too much. The introduced sketch ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... grasping at the fatalist's consolation. "If we are ripe for the gardeners hand, the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the average soldier, and frequently gain the ascendancy over common sense. Though rather reticent about expressing his religious views, he is in many respects intensely religious. He may admit being superstitious and even boast about it, or declare himself to be a fatalist. Fatalism in the vocabulary of the soldier is just another ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... for all that, your highness is a Necessitarian, yet no Fatalist. Confound not the distinct. Fatalism presumes express and irrevocable edicts of heaven concerning particular events. Whereas, Necessity holds that all events are naturally linked, and inevitably follow each other, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a crisis.... She felt within her such vitality, such power, such domination, that she believed that to-day she could command anything.... She was, poor child, supremely confident, and that not through conceit or vanity, but simply because she was a fatalist and believed that destiny had brought ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... our little aims and purposes, and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few aeons of eternal punishment more, and keep my private opinion ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... somewhat of a fatalist about art, because it seems to depend upon a lucky union of conception and technical instinct. The saddest proof of which is that many good and even great artists have not improved in greatness as their skill improved. The youthful works of genius ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stress which he laid on the necessity of extracting from life all it had to offer, since there was nothing beyond mortal love, which was the life of life. The author of Ionica seems to bring the old Greek fatalist to modern England, and to conduct him to church upon a Sunday morning. But Mimnermus is impenitent. He confesses that the preacher is right when he says that all earthly pleasures are fugitive. He has always confessed as much at home under the olive tree; it was because they were ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... of irony: Zeno, a fatalist by theory, makes his disciples heroes; Epicurus, the upholder of liberty, makes his disciples languid and effeminate. The ideal pursued is the decisive point; the stoical ideal is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an ideal out of an interest. Two tendencies, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... afterwards professor at the Virginia Military Institute of Lexington. Here he was known as a rigid Presbyterian, and a "fatalist," if it be fatalism to believe that "what will be will be,"—Jackson's ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... believed that she deserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having served her turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, who was hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could help being a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! So it was ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the collie—were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you prepare another needle, or do it in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doing so as long as possible, for I wish to continue enjoying the unbearable pain which your coldness gives me. Do you know a very strange thing? It is that, with every day, my love for you increases—though that would seem to be almost an impossibility. Why should I not become a fatalist? Remember how, on the third day that we ascended the Shlangenberg, I was moved to whisper in your ear: 'Say but the word, and I will leap into the abyss.' Had you said it, I should have leapt. Do you ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... toward me, simply because she disliked her. But come on, old comrade, we mustn't stand out here all night with the wind howling in our ears. Let us try and forget our troubles. What is to be, will be. I am nothing, if not a fatalist." Grace forced herself to smile with her usual brightness, and the two girls entered the house arm in arm, each endeavoring, for the sake of the other ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... the fellow's death, seeing that it was what he said of you which brought it upon him," Meyer replied with meaning. "Otherwise he might have gone unharmed as far as I was concerned. For the rest, I did not interfere because I saw it was useless; also I am a fatalist like our friend, the Molimo, and believe in what is decreed. The truth is," he added sharply, "among savages ladies are not ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... apprehending me, I should instantly have been shot, and my body cast on the rocks to feed the vultures and wolves. But "it was not so written," said Antonio, who, like many of his countrymen, was a fatalist. The next night we had another singular escape: we had arrived near the entrance of a horrible pass called "El puerto de la puente de las tablas," or the pass of the bridge of planks, which wound through a black and frightful mountain, on the farther side of which was the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... superstition, you say? Aye, it may be! But in the region of the front everyone you meet has become superstitious, if that is the word you choose. That is especially true of the soldiers. Every man at the front, it seemed to me, was a fatalist. What is to be will be, they say. It is certain that this feeling has helped to make them indifferent to danger, almost, indeed, contemptuous of it. And in France, I was told, almost everywhere there were shrines in which figures of Christ or of His Mother had survived the most furious ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... haughty fatalist Byzantium waits What chance the storing centuries bring forth: Another lover almost at the gates, Heralded by the cannon of ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard- headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist— I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... old man's name was Bowyer. The other, Mr. Wigginton, was a younger man; tall, grim, dark, bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his ears. He preached "higher doctrine," i.e., more fatalist and antinomian than his gentler colleague,—and, having also a stentorian voice, was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him—and if any man ever deserved hatred, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Gideon from the threshing floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for quizzing English moderation even in negation. I thought then, and have often thought since, how far the principle of moderation might be extended, and whether you could be a moderate agnostic or a moderate fatalist ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... had thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It doesn't matter" to everything. He never expressed his thoughts to himself—it was not worth while,—but ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the East has rendered me something of a fatalist, Cavanagh! Beyond keeping my door locked, I have taken no steps whatever. I ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... in danger of extinction. 'The time has come to take the final step,' said the Secretary of State. Steyn wrote back a reply in which, like his brother president, he showed a dour resolution to continue the struggle, prompted by a fatalist conviction that some outside interference would reverse the result of his appeal to arms. His attitude and that of Kruger determined the Boer leaders to hold out for a few more months, a resolution which ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flashes of fire, which he took to be horsemen; as he watched, he heard scattered shots and a faint sound of yelling. The one hasty glance told him all that he needed to know; he had not thought this move would come so soon, but luck seemed to be against him all around. Something of a fatalist, in the final analysis, he no longer wasted time in anger or regrets. He was not particularly alarmed, and would not have been so could he have known the truth, that the yelling he had heard marked the passing of Tug Bailey, who had confessed ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... "Without being a fatalist to the point of nonresistance," said he, "I have always found that the highest wisdom lies in an acquiescence with the actual." He spoke slowly, and there was a vibration of ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the most exposed positions. He rarely used a rifle, as one of his eyes was affected, but the short, stoop-shouldered, grey-bearded man, with the long riding-whip, was always in the thick of a fight, encouraging his men and pointing out the positions for attack. He was a fatalist when in battle, if not in times of peace, and it is told of him that at Modder River he was warned by one of the burghers to seek a less exposed position. "If God has ordained me to be shot to-day," ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... of optimist and fatalist, I judge. He thinks nothing matters much, for everything is coming out all right in ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... like a culprit let out of prison as she followed him down into the dining-room. For the moment she was no longer the fatalist, foreseeing inevitable exposure and punishment. Nothing had come of their meeting with Peterson—an incident which had taken her wholly by surprise, and which had threatened for an instant to result disastrously. She had spent wakeful hours as a result of that meeting; but the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... fatalist is evinced by another incident of this march in Soudan. An insect's sting had poisoned his left eye so severely that the sight was threatened. The doctor of the force advised him to wear a bandage. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... will, will of Heaven; wheel of Fortune, Ides of March, Hobson's choice. last shift, last resort; dernier ressort [Fr.]; pis aller &c (substitute) 147 [Fr.]; necessaries &c (requirement) 630. necessarian^, necessitarian^; fatalist; automaton. V. lie under a necessity; befated^, be doomed, be destined &c, in for, under the necessity of; have no choice, have no alternative; be one's fate &c n.. to be pushed to the wall to be driven into a corner, to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... into which all mortals walked sooner or later, and her particular trap had a treadmill,—a round of household duties she kept whirling with an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had been the head of the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,—which Hannah had not. But she kept the little flat with its worn furniture,—which had known so many journeys—as clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... young lady, all I have left to be proud of is my word. I give it to you that I am going after pearls. It may sound crazy, but I can't help that. I am realizing a dream. I'm something of a fatalist—I've had to be. I've always reasoned that if I could make the dream come true—this dream of pearls—I'd have a chance to turn over a new leaf. I've had to commit acts at times that were against my nature, my instincts. I've had to be cruel and terrible, because men would ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... trying times Jefferson Worth continued his operations in all parts of the Basin and started various enterprises in his new town with the conviction of a born fatalist, though he almost constantly now, except when he was with Barbara, wore that expressionless gray mask. Abe Lee's thin face, burned dark by constant exposure to the fierce desert sun, had a look of watchful readiness. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Lord Byron, is the facility which is offered to him of proving the truth of this fatalist philosophy which appears at every page of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... fears. He was certain that they were about to perish and sought consolation in the constant practice of religion, which was edifying but scarcely improved him as a companion. As for Otter, he also believed that the hour of death was nigh, but being a fatalist this did not trouble him much. On the contrary, in spite of Leonard's remonstrances he began to live hard, betaking himself freely to the beer-pot. When Leonard remonstrated with him he turned ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... naked face, in which you see the brain always working, with an almost painful simplicity—just saved from being painful by a humorous sense of external things, which becomes also a kind of intellectual criticism. He is a fatalist, and he studies the workings of fate in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. His view of women is more French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... sure I was never in a country where I perceived fewer indications of any spiritual life. Every one is busy; every one seems to be happy or at any rate not discontented; every one chatters and laughs and is, one feels, a fatalist. Sufficient unto the day! After all, it is the women of a nation that chiefly keep burning the sacred flame and pass it on; but in Japan, I understand, the women are far too busy in pleasing the men to have time ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... neither his national pride nor religious prejudices to be disarmed by a gipsy woman; but the Turk is an amazing fatalist, and unexpectedness is ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... fatalist. I've lived too long among people with whom it is the deepest rooted article of their faith, to be anything else. When my time comes, I cannot escape it.' He smiled whimsically. 'But I believe in quinine, too, and I think that the daily use of that admirable drug ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... became stupefied. Who would have believed that this trinket that he had found among his father's old traps had come to him from Princess Gulof? that it was the price she had paid for Samuel Brohl's ignominy and shame? Samuel was a fatalist; he felt that his star had set, that Fate had conspired to ruin his hopes, that he was found guilty and condemned. His ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... he can least submit to is an insult, even when merited. When he has committed a fault, he may be punished with a flogging; this he receives without a murmur, but he cannot brook an insult. He is brave, generous, and a fatalist. The profession of a robber, which he willingly exercises, is agreeable to him, on account of the life of liberty and adventure it affords, and not because it may lead to riches. Generally speaking, the Tagalocs are good fathers ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... First came a kind of gentlemen-at-large breeze, which took him seawards; then a rival gust drove him back; finally the balloon stopped for a couple of minutes to think out the situation. Reginald Hampton, being by nature a fatalist and by training an aeronaut, awaited the decision without any appearance of impatience or anxiety; when his vehicle was ready to move on, he would try to fall on his feet if possible, but not for the world would he wish to ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain chain of consequences, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... a fatalist, and I therefore resolved not to rely upon mere destiny, but, if possible, to help it a little in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... since, with the sail as their motive power, it would require no exertion on their part. Of course this reasoning was purely negative, and might not have gone far towards convincing the Coromantee,—whose fatalist tendencies at times strongly inclined him to inaction. But his comrade backed it by another argument, of a more positive kind, to which Snowball more ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, extending over all creatures from the beginning to everlasting; the reality and nature of God's purposes, and their fulfilment in creation and providence; in opposition to the atheist, the fatalist, the deist, the sceptic, and every other who does not believe in the truth of Divine revelation; are made known, and claim to be contended for ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... didn't ask that before, you little fatalist, taking it all in such a predestined way. I hope you don't think it a case of the Lord of Burleigh over again? It is only a cottage, Bluebell; but I think it is comfortable, and one mercy is no one will be able to ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... wholly a fatalist, or he never could have conceived the character of Donatello, but he was very largely so. A man for whom a life of action is impossible, and who is thus unable to escape wholly from his own shadow, naturally comes to look on any series of events as an inevitable chain of cause and effect. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... me down before the Opera, I was really almost astonished to see it still standing! But I am something of a fatalist, like all good Orientals, and I ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... these human lives stood a strong man, the skipper; no doubts assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist among them. He was trusting in himself rather than in Providence, crying, "Bail away!" instead of "Holy Virgin," defying the storm, in fact, and struggling with the sea ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... after he saw in its bald hideousness what he had done was psychologically inevitable. Although Jesus was aware of Judas' character from the beginning (John vi. 64), he that came to seek and to save that which was lost was no fatalist; and this knowledge was doubtless—like that which he had of the fate hanging over Jerusalem—subject to the possibility that repentance might change what was otherwise a certain destiny. As the event turned he ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... rifles that they did not dare use; the four passenger-cars with their window-glass all shot away; the half-dozen Arab artisans carried along for makeshift repairs en route; and the more than brave—the too-fatalist-to-care-much passengers wondering which of their number had an enemy at every halting-place; and along with that the formalism—the observance of conventions such as blowing the whistle and pulling down the signal, on a track that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... breast, and the fatalist resignation which had once already quieted him on board the wreck now quieted him again. "What must be, will be," he thought once more. "What have I to do with the future, and what ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Review, regards 'vice' and 'misery' as desirable; thinks that the 'gratification of lust' is a 'physical necessity'; and attributes to the 'physical constitution of our nature' what should be ascribed to the 'existing system of society.' Malthus, that is, is a fatalist, a materialist, and an anarchist. His only remedy is to abolish the poor-rates, and starve the poor into celibacy. The folly and wickedness of the book have provoked him, he admits, to contemptuous indignation; and Malthus may be a good man personally. Still, the 'farthing candle' of Malthus's ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to perceive something big and admirable in this man's spirit. She was not of his faith—quite the contrary. She was a fatalist. Nothing happened in her world. But she was imaginative enough to understand his point ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... she replied, "our houses are, so to say, parasols; in those cities they must be iron shrouds. Ainsi soit il!" she added, and shrugged her shoulders like a little fatalist. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... an approximate view of my life and work. That I should be happy you can scarcely expect, but I feel the calm of the fatalist who surrenders himself to his fate, astonished perhaps a little at the often curious manner in which it disposes of me and leads me into unexpected paths, and saying to myself: "So ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... from red lips peep forth! Can viciousness cap that? Horrid's the word. Yet there she is. There is that Little Girl, Her goodness and her badness, side by side, Like bacon, streak o' fat and streak o' lean. Ah, Fatalist, she must ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... "As to that, I am fatalist enough to believe that we should have met in any case. But isn't that beside the point? I have declined to discuss the matter with anyone, and I am not going to make an ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... derived from the moral perfections of God, the turpitude of sin, and the necessity of a renewed heart as being essential to religion here and happiness hereafter. But all these considerations are totally independent of the speculations of the fatalist, and are rendered powerless as incentives to action exactly in proportion to the practical influence of these speculations on ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... remember was seeing the Sergeant, in his own fashion an extremely religious man, and not ashamed of it, kneeling upon the sand and apparently saying his prayers. As he explained afterwards, of course, as a fatalist, he knew well that whatever must happen would happen, but still he considered it right and proper to return thanks to the Power which had arranged that on this occasion the happenings should be good, and not ill, a sentiment with which every one of us agreed. Opposite to him, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... results; parents see processes. They notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood of this or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw; his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement of the eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments we used to have on the vexed question of 'Free-will,' and being myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point. Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was never a worshipper of any ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... His last book, "Ecce Homo," an autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms of the threatening tragedy. It is mainly composed of such headings as the following: "Why I am so Wise," "Why I am so Clever," "Why I write such Excellent Books," and "Why I am a Fatalist." ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... "Allah-Akbar! I am a fatalist. Everything is ordained, so why should I bother? I will live for the day. I will live for the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Fate. Repeatedly is heard the lament, "Fate (impersonal) is the highest thing, fie on vain human effort." The knight confesses with his lips to a belief in the new doctrine of absorption, but at heart he is a fatalist. And his aim is to die on the field of battle, that he may go thence directly to the heaven that awaits the good and the brave.[46] Out of a long description of this heaven a few extracts here selected will show what the good ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... response, yet from somewhere upstairs he heard the half smothered cry of a woman. He gripped his revolver in his fingers. He was a fatalist, and although for a moment he regretted having come single-handed to such an obvious trap, he prepared for his task. He took a quick step forward. The ground seemed to slip from beneath his feet. He staggered wildly to recover himself, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... letter cleared still further the issues of the conflict; or rather, it led to Kendal's making a fatalist compact with himself. He was weary of the struggle, and it seemed to him that he must somehow or other escape from the grip in which his life was held. He must somehow deaden this sense, this bitter sense of loss, if it were only by postponing the last renunciation. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense. Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far too much recklessness, far too much of what is called in business circles 'expansion;' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inherited from his unknown ancestors the peculiar mental qualities that made him a leader. From Abel he had absorbed the Eskimo's apparent contempt of danger. Abel, like all Eskimos, was a fatalist. If he was caught in a perilous position he believed that if the worst came it would be because it was to be. If he escaped unharmed, so it was to be. Therefore why be excited? Bobby had as completely accepted this creed ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... good of beating up the dust On the world's highway, vexed with droughty heat? Oh, I grow fatalist—what must be must, Seeing that thou, beloved, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Jim Travers. The strange part of it was her sudden certainty that she should marry him. She found herself enveloped in a flame of possession, a feeling that he was hers—hers now, this minute, and hers for ever. Beulah was a fatalist, although she had never analyzed her own beliefs enough to know it, but she knew that Destiny had linked her life with his and that Destiny would not be balked. Her mind had been feeling its way, through the darkness of months, to ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... a shrug. "This is but the whim of a girl who does not know her own mind. Come—I will be a consistent fatalist. The affair is out of my hands. After all, it is just what I have long wished—though I never dreamed for such good fortune as that it would be Sir Paul Verdayne. She'll simply have to forgive me"—and the Countess smilingly hummed an old Dalmatian ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... weather, the boat, the sail, the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate—anything rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not acquiesce in, fate itself or ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... crown and an immense straight brim. Mrs. Luna wanted to know what he was doing. She made him sit down; she assured him that her sister quite expected him, would feel as sorry as she could ever feel for anything—for she was a kind of fatalist, anyhow—if he didn't stay to dinner. It was an immense pity—she herself was going out; in Boston you must jump at invitations. Olive, too, was going somewhere after dinner, but he mustn't mind that; perhaps ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... into a street of that strange subterranean city. Breckenridge, in the last car to leave the portal, studied his surroundings with interest as his conveyance darted through the gateway. More or less a fatalist by nature and an adventurer, of course, since no other type existed among the older spacehounds of the IPC, he was intensely interested in every new phase of their experience, and was no whit dismayed ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... falls, another steps into the vacant place,—perhaps the Commandeur himself: these dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before; there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist.... [32] ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... very slight value on life. I care little whether I die or continue in the world for some few added years. Lastly, the excitement of adventure has become a kind of necessity for me. I do not think that I could live in England for very long. Also I'm a fatalist. I believe that when my time comes I must go, that this hour is foreordained and that nothing I can do will either hasten or postpone it by one moment. Your circumstances are different. You are quite young. If you stay here and approach your father in a proper spirit, I have ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... for his health was, as a rule, excellent. He was very careful about his appearance, and was fond of women without being their slave; in his youth his life had been dissolute. He was above the prejudices of his nation, and prayed very often, although a fatalist. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... she can stand against that burst of popular fury should it break out. But he looks on as a devout man believing God's promises, and seeing past all instruments; he warns her that 'deliverance and enlargement shall arise.' He is no fatalist; he believes in man's work, therefore he urges her to let herself be the instrument by which God's work shall be done. He is no atheist; he believes in God's sovereign power and unchangeable faithfulness, therefore ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The fatalist, and those who conceive every human volition and action to be the effect of divine agency, have no rational motive, to do, or suffer for religion. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... He was a fatalist, he told her; what would be would be, and mortals like himself and herself were just scattered leaves, like barks floating down a current where were mostly ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... rarely approached their camps, but to oppress, to mock, or to destroy them. They now discovered, that all were not enemies, and kindness was felt more powerfully by contrast. It is said by Backhouse, that Robinson acted under a sense of religious duty; by Mann, that he was a fatalist or predestinarian: he was calumniated by the base and the envious: the ascendancy he acquired over the natives, the Christian philosopher can easily comprehend. The effect of "good will to men," is peace ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... practically every village within our lines. The American Red Cross and medical officers of the expedition at once set to work to combat the epidemic as far as the means at their disposal would permit. The Russian peasant, of course, in true fatalist fashion calmly accepted this situation as an inevitable act of Providence, which made the task of the Red Cross workers and others more difficult. The workers, however, devoted themselves to their errand of mercy night and day and gradually the epidemic was checked. This voluntary act ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... hain't no gre't fancy fur this secesh business, that ar' a fact. But I'm in fur't, and I reckon I sh'll haf' ter put it through;" and Dan heaved a deep sigh of regret. Without knowing it, he was a fatalist. Being too weak or inert to resist the hand of despotism laid upon him, he yielded to its weight and accepted it as destiny. The rebel ranks have ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... thoughts was one master-feeling, that Providence had given me my chance and I must make the most of it. Perhaps the Calvinism of my father's preaching had unconsciously taken grip of my soul. At any rate I was a fatalist in creed, believing that what was willed would happen, and that man was but a puppet in the hands of his Maker. I looked on the last months as a clear course which had been mapped out for me. Not for nothing had ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... there is a strong southerly drift upon the pack. Should the wind continue favourable it will break up as rapidly as it formed. At present we can do nothing but smoke and wait and hope for the best. I am rapidly becoming a fatalist. When dealing with such uncertain factors as wind and ice a man can be nothing else. Perhaps it was the wind and sand of the Arabian deserts which gave the minds of the original followers of Mahomet their ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... man, and the policeman improved the opportunity to visit the bush and bring away his breakfast. When the fellow returned and found his table empty, he did not manifest the slightest disappointment (the shrike never does; he is a fatalist, I think); but in order to see what he would do, the policeman tossed the body to him. It lodged on one of the outer twigs, and immediately the shrike came for it; at the same time spreading his beautifully bordered tail and screaming loudly. Whether these demonstrations were intended to express ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... to be coaxed into speech, and when Pierre entered the room she rose and left the breakfast table. The sad eyes of Jim Boone followed her and then turned to Pierre. No explanation was forthcoming, and he asked for none. The old fatalist had accepted the worst, and now he waited for ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Makame, the diver — knowing full well what it meant — Fatalist, gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content, Flattened in mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... this news we debated whether it would not be well for us to follow their example and, trekking westwards, try to find a pass in the mountains. Upon this point there was a division of opinion among us. Marais, who was a fatalist, wished to go on, saying that the good Lord would protect us, as He had done in ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... sucking their breasts; the same little boys and little girls laden with a few miserable rags; the same able-bodied men carrying the food they had saved. The older people gazed straight in front of them with the stolid despair of the fatalist East, and did not utter a word. A woman who had given birth to a child the very night before was being carried on a single plank slung on ropes, with a green-white pallor of death on her features. I have never taken part in such ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... efficiently spoiled for anything else but the station in life which should have been mine—but never has been and, now, never can be. I used to have high aspirations, but promises never kept shattered most of my ideals. The hard knocks of life have made me a fatalist, so now I shrug my shoulders. "Che sara sara." I have had to lead my own life and, all considered, I have enjoyed it. I have crowded into thirty-nine years more sensations than fall to the lot of the average ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... 1762 when she galloped in her cuirassier's uniform through the streets of St. Petersburg. "Toute la politique," she said, "est fondee sur trois mots circonstances, conjectures et conjonctures;" and like many leaders of action she was in her moments a fatalist, for then she saw how little after all, the greatest, as Bismarck says, can ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... man and not with that. Perhaps you recall Longfellows's lines: 'The men that women marry, and why they marry them, will always be a marvel and a mystery to the world.' Personally, I'm a bit of a fatalist regarding love. I think hearts are mated when they're fashioned, and when they get together you can no more keep them apart than you keep two drops of quicksilver from running into each other when they touch. ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... wife, mother of six children and portly, was a fatalist. "Why worry?" she was wont to say. "When the time comes for me to die, it will come properly enough, and that's all there is ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... those good old-standers the musket, the cutlass and the knife, each of which, in the sailor's grasp, played its part in the rough-and-tumble of pressing, and played it well. A case in point, familiar to every seaman, was the last fight put up by that famous Plymouth sailor, Emanuel Herbert, another fatalist who, like Bingham, believed in having two strings to his bow. He accordingly provided himself with both fuzee and hanger, and with these comforting bed-fellows retired to rest in an upper chamber of the public-house ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... I have something else that will do quite as well. If it is written that I am to die, why give Death cause to be angry? I am a fatalist, you see. And I want you to take back your revolver, with my apologies, and quite without any more explanation than I ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... be," said the colonel; "but he will find more silent and still harder men up against him. If you think we are going to lie down and submit like the fatalist nobles of Petrograd, you ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... by some persistent ill luck and was like an oriental fatalist, and having seen her dreams all fade away and her hopes crushed, she would sometimes hesitate a whole day or longer before undertaking the simplest thing, for fear she might be on the wrong road and it would turn out badly. She kept repeating: "Talk of bad luck—I ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... found; who under such circumstances would have recognised, described, and testified to its existence? Even at Sunderland, amongst ourselves, its existence was long hotly disputed by the learned of the faculty; and the fatalist barbarian of these regions would have dismissed the enquiry with a prayer of resignation, while he bowed his head to the grave, or if his strength permitted, with a stroke of his dagger against the impious enquirer who had dared to interfere with the immutable decrees of ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... thoroughly bewildered with the events of the morning, following the variations of hope and despondency produced by the near approach to the object of his journey, and then finding it elude him, which had occurred twice in the last few weeks. Without knowing it, he was becoming a practical fatalist, inclined to do what seemed best at the moment, and let things slide, forming no plans for a future which was so very uncertain. Not a bad state of mind this for a hot country, where worry of mind is especially trying. Perhaps that is why Asiatics ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the poet taught. The religion of the East is fatalism. A fatalist who endeavours to shun death ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... "'I am no fatalist, son. But I believe in the just law of retribution, as taught in the holy scriptures. There is resentment against you in the jungle family; sometime it may ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda |
