"There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be..."
— John Lennon

"The only thing you have to decide is what to do with time that is given to you."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings - Return of the King)

""One love, one heart, one destiny"
"
— Bob Marley

"Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs."
— Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)

"I told you. You don't love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand."
— L.J. Smith

"A woman's destiny, they say, is not fulfilled until she holds in her arms her own little book."
— Caroline Mytinger (Headhunting in the Solomon Islands: Around the Coral Sea)

"We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die."
— Douglas Coupland

"That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves"
— Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)

"There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore."
— Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)

"Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside."
— Bob Dylan (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966)

"If you want to identify me,ask me not where I live,or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail,ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."
— Thomas Merton

"I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come."
— Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)

"When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story."
— Charles Baxter (Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction)

"Nothing lasts forever, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the bullshit, take chances, and never have regrets, because at one point, everything you did was exactly what you wanted."
— Ashley Dawn Loggins

"the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. "
— jeanette winterson (sexing the cherry)

"I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice."
— Jeanette Winterson (Lighthousekeeping)

"A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind."
— Daisaku Ikeda (The Human Revolution)

"Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
- Tithonus"
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Destiny is not a matter of change, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
— William Jennings Bryan

"I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"'Garion,' she said very calmly, 'the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.'
'I didn't want them to, Aunt Pol.'
'There are those of us who aren't given that option, Garion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It's as simple as that.'
He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. 'Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?'
'Can you possibly think of anyone else you'd trust to deal with these matters, Garion?'
He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. 'No,' he sighed, 'I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn't even consulted.'
'Neither was I, Garion,' she answered. 'But we didn't have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.'"
— David Eddings (Sorceress of Darshiva)

"Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
— Henry Miller

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve."
— Albert Schweitzer

"But then something happened, Ray, something amazing. Something...

"That white cop sitting next to me? He took a long look at my mother when she came in, just like, absorbed her, and then without even turning to me, he just put his hand on my back, up between my neck and shoulder...

"And all he did was squeeze. Give me a little squeeze of sympathy, then rubbed that same spot with his palm for maybe two, three seconds, and that was it.

"But I swear to you, nobody, in my entire life up to that point had ever touched me with that kind of tenderness. I had never experienced a sympathetic hand like that, and Ray, it felt like lightning.

"I mean, the guy did it without thinking, I'm sure. And when dinnertime rolled around he had probably forgotten all about it. Forgot about me, too, for that matter... But I didn't forget.

"I didn't walk around thinking about it nonstop either, but something like seven years later when I was at community college? The recruiting officer for the PD came on campus for Career Day, and I didn't really like college all that much to begin with, so I took the test for the academy, scored high, quit school and never looked back.

"And usually when I tell people why I became a cop I say because it would keep Butchie and Antoine out of my life, and there's some truth in that.

"But I think the real reason was because that recruiting officer on campus that day reminded me, in some way, you know, conscious or not, of that housing cop who had sat on the bench with me when I was thirteen.

"In fact, I don't think it, I know it. As sure as I'm standing here, I know I became a cop because of him. For him. To be like him. God as my witness, Ray. The man put his hand on my back for three seconds and it rerouted my life for the next twenty-nine years.

"It's the enormity of small things... Adults, grown-ups, us, we have so much power... And sometimes when we find ourselves coming into contact with certain kinds of kids? Needy kids? We have to be ever so careful..."
— Richard Price

"Bound souls. He had always thought the stories of men and women bound throughout all eternity by the strength of passion, either love or hate, were but pleasant tales for long winter’s nights. Bound souls, two sides of the same counter, together through all the lives of the souls, and forever before and afterward. But he recognized the woman just as surely as she recognized him, and he knew the tales were true."
— Ann Marston (The Western King)

"A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette"
— Cesare Pavese (This business of living: Diaries, 1935-1950)

"A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape."
— Salman Rushdie (Shame)

"He knew her, and she knew him. He had no idea if the images he saw came from past or future, or both, but he knew her. Their souls were bound, had always been bound, and always would be. They were two with one soul between them, perfectly joined, perfectly fitted."
— Ann Marston (The Western King)

"After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?"
— Tad Williams (Sea of Silver Light)

"No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?

No.

It's never like what you expected.

Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?"
— Cormac McCarthy (The Crossing)

"Bukan maksudku mau berbagi nasib, nasib adalah kesunyian masing-masing"
— Chairil Anwar

"When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade."
— Andrew Carnegie

"Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey."
— John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)

"All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth."
— Richard Matheson (What Dreams May Come)

"No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Night Flight)

"Be careful of what you think about -- your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become habits, your habits become your character...and your character becomes your destiny"
— Unknown Fan

"Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity."
— Jawahar Lal Nehru

"I've finally figured out,
what being alone means,
for today i left destiny behind,
not to come back, it seems"
— Kaity Zaelit

"The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices."
— Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.)

"The worst destiny for a dog is to guard the frontier between South and North Korea"
— The Club of Joyful and Quick-witted

"But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"I have read true piety defined as: loving one’s destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of “religiousness” is the condition for real happiness. "
— Isak Dinesen (Letters from Africa, 1914-1931)

"She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows its her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work. Destiny is bigger in men's lives. Destiny is a welcome guest in a man's house. She barely knocks and he's there to open the door. "Yes, yes. You do it," he says to destiny and lumbers back to his chair."
— Marlena De Blasi (That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story)

"Habent sua fata libelli. (Books have their own destinies.)"
— Terentianus Maurus (De syllabis)