Joseph Conrad Quotes

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

Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

We do not ask to be born; and we do not ask to die. But born we are and die we must. We come into existence and we pass out of existence. And in neither case does high-handed fate await our ratification of its decree.

We have to live with our loneliness and the destiny that drives each person to the order of things.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

There's nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Crazy as it sounds, I'm a believer in destiny and serendipity, and I have had cosmic experiences all my life. Something told me I was meant for greater stuff. And look, I've had a baby! And I've written an opera!

In my life, I am often reminded that there is a destiny that rules over us, because no one whom I know about or whom I read about seems to be completely happy during a long time.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

It's really not a good idea to forecast or double guess the fates; you will always be fooled.

I believe life is fated - what's going to happen will happen.

We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.

Life is a pre-existing condition.

It is really strange how life works, isn't it?

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.

Each man's death is fated from the beginning of time.

It lies not in our power to love or hate, for will in us is overruled by fate.

Whatever may happen to you was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being.

To live is nothing more than to come here to die, to be what we were before being born, but with apprenticeship, experience, knowledge of cause, and perhaps with will.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.