Ralph Waldo Emerson Fate Quotations

Whatever limits us we call fate.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

The babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason visibly stream.

We may be partial, but Fate is not.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free.

O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched. Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

Fate is unpenetrated causes.

We can only obey our own polarity.

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.

The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate.

And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.

In spite of Virtue and the Muse, Nemesis will have her dues, And all our struggles and our toils Tighter wind the giant coils.

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

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.

We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born.

Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good.

But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.