Fate

I dare not with my own eyes witness this fight between my son and Menelaos, for Zeus and the other immortals alone know which of the two is doomed to undergo the outcome of death.

He told them not to take part in the war, but they gave him no heed, for fate lured them to destruction.

they have ever trembled at the sight of him, and now that he is roused to such fury about his comrade, he will override fate itself and storm their city.

Nor, indeed, does anyone seem to me to confirm more strongly—not only fate, but even necessity and the compelling force of all things—and to have abolished the voluntary motions of the mind, than this man, who confesses that he could not otherwise withstand fate, unless he had taken refuge in these fictitious swerves.

‘Fate is the connection of things, holding fast one to another through all eternity, which is varied by its own order and law, yet in such a way that the variation itself possesses eternity.

‘Chrysippus, sweating and laboring as to how he may explain both that all things come to pass by fate and that there is something in our power, gets himself entangled in this way.

"Whether in the vastness of prosperity or in the most terrible adversity, fate drags a man about like one bound by a rope.

"Fate for living beings is surely irresistible, O best of monkeys — behold Saumitri, and me, and Rāma, all bewildered by calamities.

that Rāma's mind is not elsewhere — and yet that he is sunk in grief.

As for those who say that human affairs are governed by fate, do not seek arguments from us, but wound them with the proper barbs of rhetoric;

especially since you yourselves say that all things come to pass by fate, and that what has always been true from all eternity is fate:

And so the greatest matters have passed by in silence — about divination, about fate — on which questions you, indeed, touch briefly, but our school is wont to say much, though they are kept separate from this question which is now in hand.

Fortune has been called by many names among men:

'But if you look back to the swift sun and the stars that follow in order, never will tomorrow's hour deceive you, nor will you be ensnared by the treacheries of a cloudless night.

An unbroken order of fates and an inevitable course drives them.

The fates lead us on, and the first hour of our birth has appointed how much time remains to each.

The very Maker and Ruler of all things did indeed write the fates, but he also follows them;

But dreadful is the mysterious power of fate—there is no deliverance from it by wealth or by war, by towered city, or dark, sea-beaten ships.

All is amiss that is in my hands, and, again, a crushing fate has leapt upon my head.

Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.

The son of Zeus is springing upon him with fiery lightning, and with him come the dread unerring Fates.

No, it is not your fate to fall at my hands, since Apollo, to whom this matter is a concern, is sufficient.

When I heard this, I turned in flight from the land of Corinth, from then on thinking of it only by its position under the stars, to some spot where I should never see fulfillment of the infamies foretold in my evil fate.

for at this moment, as it seems, Fate was leading them on;