Stefan Zweig Quotes

The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance.

Events are always in the saddle.

But if you know that you are a man too, and that even such are those that rule, learn this first of all: that all human affairs are a wheel which, as it turns, does not allow the same men always to be fortunate.

Certainly. My whole life has been decided by fate. I think something more powerful than we are decides our fates for us. I know one thing – I've never planned anything that ever happened to me.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.

Fortune blinds men when she does not wish them to withstand the violence of her onslaughts.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Time is the king of all men, he is their parent and their grave, and gives them what he will and not what they crave.

When Karim and his group heard about Saddam coming, they wanted to kill him, but fate had other ideas.

Life to me is defined by uncertainty. Uncertainty is the state in which we live, and there is no way to outfox it.

It's a lot like life. I think 99 percent of what goes on in life, we have very little control over.

Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune.

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.

There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans.

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

Wherefore the race being not to the swift, etc. but time and chance happening to all men, I leave the Judgement of the whole to the Candid, of whose correction I shall never be impatient.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.

Marriage happens; it can't be planned. When it has to happen, it will happen. Normally, what we always believe is that however prepared you are, if it's not meant to happen, it won't. And however much we have not planned, it will still happen if it's destined.