James Stephens Quotes

Luck really has nothing to do with human existence, since God is not a random God.

Man does what he can, and God what he will.

Man Proposeth, God disposeth.

Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases.

What happened was no accident. Everything was preordained. True, the will was free, but heaven also made its ordinances.

If a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come. He is bound to no one that the world unfold just so upon its course and those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

Leave the rest to the gods.

God just has a way of working things out the way he wants to and you have no say in that.

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.

I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.

Man proposes, but God disposes.

What men call accident is God's own part.

We are the playthings of the gods.

Man appoints, and God disappoints.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.

Whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me.

I do like the idea of consequence and how our actions play themselves out, but I am completely scared of knowing what the future would be like. I would never go near a fortune teller, even though it's probably not even real. I just don't wanna know.

Man plans, but God decides.

God doesn’t want me to do this, so I can’t do what God doesn’t want me to do

I always believe that it is destiny and divine intervention that are with me.

You can't stop what God wants to happen.

Even though I'm super into tarot and astrology, I don't believe in knowing too much about the future.

There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God.