Destiny and Overcoming

to reporters the day after his accession to the Presidency on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

This is the beginning of the end.

Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity … It is a part of nature.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,

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

The childhood shows the man,

He who seeking asses found a kingdom.

The world was all before them, where to choose

Long is the way

Who overcomes

Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorrèd shears,

L’art est un anti-destin.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

It is not best to swap horses when crossing streams.

It lies in the lap of the gods.

My object all sublime

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

Hitch your wagon to a star.

‘Character’ says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms—‘character is destiny.’