Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

Life is a compromise between fate and free will.

The futures and ultimate fates of the characters in The Snow Queen are profoundly changed by choices made in their own minds or hearts, as well as choices unexpectedly forced on them by things beyond their control.

In the end, human history is made up of all our decisions.

When we get to the future, I'll determine the future.

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.

The word 'fate' doesn't really mean much to me in some ways. I think we make our own.

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

We make destiny with every turn, every choice.

Man needs to choose, not just accept, his destiny.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

In order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that Fortune may be mistress of one half our actions but then even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

Flying or falling, it's up to us.

We create our fate everyday

More than anything else, I believe it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives that determine our destiny.

To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.

Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be.

People can't do much about the fate part, but we can certainly do a lot about the man part.

Diminish the influence of fate