Destiny and Overcoming

When he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

 

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

 

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

One ship sails East, And another West, By the self-same winds that blow, Tis the set of the sails And not the gales, That tells the way we go

O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?

 

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that Fate and character are the same conception.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Destiny has two ways of crushing us— by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

For man is man and master of his fate.

 

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. . . . Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

’Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.

Others apart sat on a hill retir’d, In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix’d fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.

By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.

There’s no such thing as chance; And what to us seems merest accident Springs from the deepest source of destiny.

 

I had rather ride on an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me.

Wayfarer, there is no way, you make the way as you go. As you go, you make the way and stopping to look behind, you see the path that your feet will never travel again. Wayfarer, there is no way— only foam trails in the sea.