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Destiny   Listen
noun
Destiny  n.  (pl. destinies)  
1.
That to which any person or thing is destined; predetermined state; condition foreordained by the Divine or by human will; fate; lot; doom. "Thither he Will come to know his destiny." "No man of woman born, Coward or brave, can shun his destiny."
2.
The fixed order of things; invincible necessity; fate; a resistless power or agency conceived of as determining the future, whether in general or of an individual. "But who can turn the stream of destiny?" "Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny."
The Destinies (Anc. Myth.), the three Parcae, or Fates; the supposed powers which preside over human life, and determine its circumstances and duration. "Marked by the Destinies to be avoided."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Destiny" Quotes from Famous Books



... with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in it;—one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,—said, in speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and met everywhere, 'This young German will never gain for himself the title of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... home, of hope, of Heaven bereft; It is the destiny of man To cower beneath his Maker's ban, And hide from his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then strait up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire, Or lack'd she ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... destiny that draws two young persons to each other is hard to understand!... In that temple there was a young acolyte, and love ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... have tried to show, something much more tremendous than the mere supremacy of a race. Nothing less than the future of the world was assured upon those stricken fields and about those ruined fortresses, the supremacy of the Catholic religion in which was involved the whole destiny of Europe, the continuance of our civilisation and culture. For let it be said again: these wars of the sixth century were not a struggle to the death between two races, but between two religions; the opponents were not really ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... he, 'what a fortunate destiny mine is, that at a moment when I thought the angel of death was about to seize me for his own, the angel of life comes and blows a fresh existence into ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... call "Reigning." "We ARE NOT the first men," they say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted." It is the kings who tell Zarathustra: "There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous." The kings are also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon he proceeds ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... was indeed worthy of all the interest it excited. The destiny of nearly a million of human beings—nay, the question whether they should be treated as men with rational souls, or as the beasts which perish—should enjoy the liberty to which all God's creatures are entitled, as of right, or be harassed, oppressed, tormented, and stinted, both as regarded ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... these that I would speak; but of a nation nearer her foot-stool, and which at this moment looks to her with anxiety, with affection, perhaps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and beauty of the Saxon. Will it be her proud destiny at length to bear relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand which might inspire troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the chain of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... upon a Dervish's fears," remarked Brown. "We must always bear in mind that they are not amenable to the same motives as other people. Many of them are anxious to meet death, and all of them are absolute, uncompromising believers in destiny. They exist as a reductio ad absurdum of all bigotry—a proof of how surely it leads towards ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... passionate rebellion against the fate that deferred all the pleasure of the present to the needs of the future generation. Evolution has revealed the necessity for this subordination of the individual lot to the destiny of the race, if progress is to be made. The man who asserts himself as free from race trammels is snuffed out as a factor—a blighted blossom fallen to earth and trodden under foot. To the student of biological evolution, the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... seemed endangered. The Indians were really less to be feared than at any time before. They were weaker, and the whites were stronger. They were striving against destiny; and though their fate was sealed with the blood of their enemies, their fate was sealed. All the chances that had favored them had favored them in vain, and neither their wily courage nor their pitiless despair availed them against the people who outnumbered ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... These are the universality of the Gospel, the jealousy of national Judaism, and the Divine initiative manifest in the gradual stages by which men of Jewish birth were led to recognize the Divine will in the setting aside of national restrictions, alien to the universal destiny of the Church. The practical moral is the Divine character of the Christian religion, as evinced by the manner of its extension in the empire, no less than by its original embodiment in the Founder's life and death. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... resenting the tone which his brother had taken with him, Geoffrey instantly descended from the pedestal of glory on which he stood, and placed himself without a struggle in the hands which vicariously held his destiny—otherwise, the hands which vicariously held the purse. In five minutes more the meeting had been dismissed, with all needful assurances relating to Geoffrey's share in the coming Sports—and the two brothers were closeted ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... is an "oracle" at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony—in those four notes lies one of Beethoven's greatest messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness of fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of destiny, and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of Emerson's revelations—even to the "common heart" of Concord—the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the faith that it will be opened—and the human ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... govern real life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the victims move on to the final scene in which the wreck ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... utmost capacity. But even then we could not carry everything, and I left several bundles behind the barn, where we could readily obtain them for a second load. I intended to take Bully with me, but I could not find him. He was in the habit of making journeys about the village, and he missed his destiny by being absent ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... Thais, have tasted diverse joys such as it is rarely given to the same person to know. I should really like to be for one hour, a saint like our dear friend Paphnutius. But that is not possible. Farewell, then, Thais! Go where the secret forces of nature and your destiny conduct you! Go, and take with you, whithersoever you go, the good wishes of Nicias! I know that is mere foolishness, but can I give you anything more than barren regrets and vain wishes in payment for the delicious illusions which once enveloped me when I was in your arms, and of which ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... not surpassed in power and beauty by those in 'The Admiral's Daughter.' No reader can bear the heroine company without feeling the same sense of powerlessness to cope with the fascinations of a dark destiny which is conveyed by the stories of Richardson's 'Clarissa,' and Scott's 'Lucy Ashton.' This is praise ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... love him I have no more to say; if you love me, avow it, as I will then avow my love, my intentions, in the face of day. Reflect before you speak. It is a solemn moment—a moment which holds alike my destiny and yours ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... incorporating it in his list, remarked that it was worth all the rest put together. Whenever we sat together afterwards at a separation meeting, he would pass me the joke about the "hoofs of the bullocks" deciding the boundary. Sir John Robertson has since told us that Melbourne missed its destiny in this fatal separation movement, for, had she remained within New South Wales, she would have been the capital of Eastern Australia. Well, that slap in the face to us is not altogether uncleverly or unfoundedly directed. The eventuality thus predicted ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... chance, or design, or destiny, that the seven nails in the sole of the man's shoe ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... should have been content with the twinkle of the tiniest star, but even this light was withheld from me. Just then came the letter from McGeechy; and about the same time, arrived my first check, a payment from Hearth and Home for a contribution called A Destiny (now A Dreamer in A Child World). The letter was signed, 'Editor' and unless sent by an assistant it must have come from Ik Marvel himself, God bless him! I thought my fortune made. Almost immediately I sent off another contribution, whereupon to my dismay came this reply: 'The management has decided ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... that she could not survive the immense joy which destiny had accorded her; and she did not rebel against this decree. It seemed to her right and just. She had never desired any other ending to her love than to die beloved, to die with Andras's kiss of forgiveness upon her lips, with his arms about her, and to sink ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the children. These are the productive years, and generally unfit the women to go into economic competition with the rest of the world afterwards. Society owes it to the mothers of the race to see that they are not made to suffer for fulfilling their destiny. Motherhood today is as dangerous as the soldier's life, though it ought not to be, and it is more difficult to raise children than to conduct a successful business. However, the financial rewards for motherhood are generally nil. The least ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... argued that such a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their ordinary course, without charging anybody to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... once told, she lost all the fatal influence which she could now exercise over the queen's destiny; therefore she again resolved to keep ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the gratings over the fire-room. But this did not continue long, for, either according to blind chance, or to the lines of fate written in the book of life ere ever the foundations of the world were laid, Michael was scheduled for an adventure that was profoundly to affect, not alone his own destiny, but the destinies of Kwaque and Dag Daughtry and determine the very place of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... greatly to see that you unite the courage of men to the docility of babes. Hitherto your lot has been that of peace, and if you have not enjoyed riches, you have at any rate been contented: another destiny is before you now—peace and content have left the country, and have been followed by robbery, confusion, and war. My children, you must, for a while, give over your accustomed peaceful duties; your hands—your hearts—all your energy, and all your courage, are required by God for ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... an instinct of danger; and when the first intimations of a decided purpose to make a breach between her and Ellis came, she set her face like flint against them, not in any passionate outbreak, but with a calm assertion of her undying love and her readiness to accept the destiny that lay before her. To the declaration of her mother that Ellis was doomed by inheritance to the life of a ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... also thou, a World, With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant, Rounded by thee in one—one common orbic language, One common indivisible destiny for All. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... destiny that awaits us so very mournful? Is thy wife necessarily to lose so many comforts and incur so many mortifications? Are my funds so small, that they will not secure to me the privilege of a separate apartment, in which I may pass my time ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... not disappointed her. When she had crowned him with a title she had felt that a high destiny awaited him and the event proved it. After a youth on the ranch, Mark, at sixteen, grew restive, at seventeen announced that he wanted an education and at eighteen packed his grip and went to work his way through Stanford University. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Matthew Arnold used to call it, was so admitted to be the three-fourths of life he claimed for it, as it was between the Restoration and the French Revolution. It was conduct, not faith, ethics not religion, the "whole duty of man" in this life, not his supernatural destiny in another, that mainly occupied the minds of serious people {28} in that unecclesiastical age. And Johnson, definite Christian, definite Churchman as he was, full even of ecclesiastical prejudices, was just the man to appeal to a generation with ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... of fact somebody else had gone out, and had come very near indeed to snapping him up; but there are things which do not bear thinking of. It was Hugh's firm conviction that Destiny and not Jane, had flung Rosemary in front of his motor; but Destiny could not ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... of the nature of the principles from which it takes its rise. But we cannot consider those principles altogether sound. They appear to be too sceptical, with respect to the powers of the human mind, and the destiny of human knowledge. The sentiment of Leibnitz seems to rest upon a more solid foundation. "It is necessary to come," says he, "to the grand question which M. Bayle has recently brought upon the carpet, to ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... heart and lung machine, iron lung; medical devices &c. 662. lifeblood; Archeus[obs3]; existence &c. 1. vivification; vital force; vitalization; revivification &c. 163; Prometheus; life to come &c. (destiny) 152. [Science of life] physiology, biology; animal ecology. nourishment, staff of life &c. (food) 298. genetics, heredity, inheritance, evolution, natural selection, reproduction (production) 161. microbe, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... not be," said Mary, "that he killed one man in self-defense and then his destiny drove him, and bad luck forced him into one bad position after another? There have been histories as strange as ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... teaching is apt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocation as real as if that soul were alone upon the planet. Yet it is a fact. We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall take care of every atom of life on the globe: we are compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness. But ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... to the Scottish people has found one result in the impulse it has afforded to the growth of material prosperity, and it is not easy to regret that Scotland, at the date of the Reformation, was free to work out its own ecclesiastical destiny. ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... by the frequent falling of a human figure along the road. I knew the figures were those of his enemies, the much-abused Hebrews—that he was still wreaking his vengeance on the representatives of Israel—that he was fulfilling the unfortunate destiny of a misguided and merciless mule. Strange animal! Had the honest tradesman ever sold his grandfather a bogus watch? or inveigled his innocent sire into the mysterious precincts of a mock-auction? Alas! history does not record, and intuition ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... knows, and knowing, never once forgets The pedigree divine of his own soul, Can conquer, shape and govern destiny And use vast space as 'twere a board for chess With stars for pawns; can change his horoscope To suit his will; turn failure to success, And from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... hight Sidrophel, That deals in destiny's dark counsels, And sage opinions of the moon sells, To whom all people, far and near, On deep ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... all men, though practically only to those who listen to the Saviour's words and adorn themselves with works of righteousness.[611] Irenaeus presented this work of Christ from various points of view. He regards it as the realisation of man's original destiny, that is, being in communion with God, contemplating God, being imperishable like God; he moreover views it as the abolition of the consequences of Adam's disobedience, and therefore as the redemption ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... the sad and terrible destiny of the king imprisoned in the Bastille, and tearing, in sheer despair, the bolts and bars of his dungeon, the rhetoric of the chroniclers of old would not fail to present, as a complete antithesis, the picture ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... remain a prisoner until she promised obedience. It was the most trying time of her whole life. Beset on every side, beaten, buffetted, tyrannized over, fed on food that was only fit for a dog, she would certainly have died in the struggle had not destiny sent her a protector in the person of Borachio, a young man about twenty-five years of age, whose heart was touched by ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... Cousin Julia, I somehow suspect everything and everybody now. I feel very lonely in the world—as if there was a destiny at work to make my whole life one long conflict, which I must carry on ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... like to have it always in the room with me. I thought of the lovely picture of Mary that I had seen at Edinburgh Castle, and reflected what a symbol it would be,—how expressive of a human being having her destiny in her own hands,—if that beautiful young Queen were painted as carrying this dish, containing her own woful head, and perhaps casting a curious and pitiful glance down upon it, as if it were not ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... for the public good it is the best that we can do in this world. But are you composed at the sad news concerning the Lusitania? If you think that event was directed by divine destiny then you can be ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... of change, except for punishment; the indissoluble tie of men to masters—was one part of Arthur's plan. The knowledge that submission was the only chance of happiness, caused many to yield to their destiny without a struggle; and where masters were humane, the connection lasted, without murmuring or oppression, until the close; but with many more, it was a period of misery, mental and bodily—the fierce passions breaking into open war, and seeking nothing ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... she spect on him?" said Aunt Chloe, indignantly, while the two boys, who now seemed to comprehend at once their father's destiny, clung to her gown, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... his court, returned to Paris. The secret communicated by the mysterious visitor from Spain was still undivulged. The mystery was so great, and its apparent bearing upon the destiny of Mary so direct, that she resolved to interrogate one of the most influential ministers of the court upon the subject. He, thinking in some degree to evade the question, replied that the courier had come simply to inform Anne of Austria that the Queen ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... he led the way, followed by Mistress Martha Trapbois, whose singular destiny, though it had heaped her with wealth, had left her, for the moment, no wiser counsellor, or more distinguished protector, than honest Richie ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... measure of his happiness, and his own exertions have never procured him any certain reward; profligate, because, probably from the confused variety of his moral lessons, he has at last concluded that right and wrong are but unmeaning words. Let us change the destiny of this child, by changing his education. Place him under the sole care of a person of an enlarged capacity, and a steady mind; who has formed just notions of right and wrong; and who, in the distribution of reward and punishment, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... compels me to avoid, to remove, and to combat the one, and to seek, to desire, and to procure the other. In a world where everything is from necessity, a God who remedies nothing, and allows things to follow their own course, is He anything else but destiny or necessity personified? It is a deaf God who can effect no change on the general laws to which He is subjected Himself. What do I care for the infinite power of a being who can do but a very few things ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... to the heath-land which leads up to the great Fontainebleau quarry. There I had him in full sight, and knew that he could not escape me. He ran well, it is true—ran as a coward runs when his life is the stake. But I ran as Destiny runs when it gets behind a man's heels. Yard by yard I drew in upon him. He was rolling and staggering. I could hear the rasping and crackling of his breath. The great gulf of the quarry suddenly yawned in front of his path, and glancing at me over his shoulder, he gave a shriek ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Coradino, who was to die later on under the axe of the executioner upon attempting the defense of his rights. As the Oriental empress did not represent any danger for the dynasty of Anjou, the conqueror let her follow out her destiny, as lonely and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... himself—green bud, half blown, or open to its own deep fragrant heart. To him that hath shall be given, and much forgiven. For it is the law of the strong and the prophets: and a little should be left to that Destiny which the devout revere ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... who guides the destiny of a man or a race," said Venor almost in meditation. "He is not the man who gathers or disperses the wealth, or who builds the cities and the ships to the stars. The master is he who teaches what must be done with these things and how a people ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... arm to stop him. "Alas!" said he, "All advice would be useless. I can foretell destiny, but I cannot change it. M. de la Perouse would laugh if he heard my words, as the son of Priam laughed when Cassandra prophesied; and see, you begin to laugh yourself, Count Haga, and laughing is contagious: your companions are catching it. Do ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... she had seemed to herself to be moving among them, an invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with them than with her own friends, because she knew their secrets and possessed a divine foreknowledge of their destiny. They had been so unhappy, such muddlers, so wrong-headed, it seemed to her. She could have told them what to do, and what not to do. It was a melancholy fact that they would pay no heed to her, and were bound to come ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... Orchard just as the sun soared redly up above the distant forest; and the old homestead waked up with it. Morning always smiled on Apple Orchard, and the brilliant flush seemed, there, more brilliant still; while all the happy breezes flying over it seemed to regret their destiny which led them far ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... distinct invasions of Canada by superior forces of the enemy were defeated." Out of fifty-six military and naval engagements between the British and U.S. forces, thirty-six were won by the British. Though the victories of 1812 were the direct factors that brought about a change in the national destiny of Canada, "Queenston Heights was not the culminating feat of arms." As a result of brooding over these disasters that had befallen the "Grand Army of the West," and the "national disgrace" of overwhelming defeat, the people ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... the cave are ignorant of what is going on. Little dream they of the red tragedy soon to be enacted so near, or how much they themselves may be affected by its result. It is indeed to them the chances of a contrasting destiny. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... real work began. Nobody in the Bunch denied that it was a grind. For most, there were those tough courses at Tech. And a job, for money, for sustenance. And the time that must be spent working for—Destiny. Sleep was least important—a few hours, long ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... are three men of sin, whom Destiny,— That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in't,—the never-surfeited sea 55 Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island, Where man doth not inhabit,—you 'mongst men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad; And even with such-like valour men hang and drown Their proper selves. ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... night club of many lights and much high-pitched laughter, where he had come for an hour of forgetfulness and an execrable dinner, John Northwood was suddenly conscious that Fate had begun shuffling the cards of his destiny for a dramatic game. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... Within I see them sit, The feasters, daring destiny with wit, Casting to win Or lose their utmost, and men hurry by ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... men, and seven horses, because he had associat himself with Tydeus, Capaneus and other impious commanders marching to the siege of Thebe." ("Gillespie's Miscel. Quest.," p. 178.) AEschylus makes Eteocles give the following description of the character of Amphiaraus, and foretell his destiny.—("Septem ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... after this bloody day; I can hear, from hour to hour, the distant all's well of our sentinels. Those foreign words bring back my grief; they remind me of what I sometimes forget in writing—that I am faraway, separated from you and from my child! Poor, beloved beings! what will be your destiny? Ah! if I could only send you, in time, that medal, which, by a fatal accident, I carried away with me from Warsaw, you might, perhaps, obtain leave to visit France, or at least to send our child there with Dagobert; for you know of what importance—But why ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... and touching picture by the well-known writer of magazine stories and photoplays, James Oppenheim, produced by the Edison Company. Again, there are more general titles exploiting the theme of the story, as "The Ways of Destiny," "The God Within," and "Intolerance." There are also symbolical titles, which have, naturally, a double meaning, playing upon an incident in the plot, as "A Pearl of Greater Price," and "Written in ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... the converse of men. To live plainly is no hardship to me; it would be a great hardship to fall on lower associations, which is the common destiny of the poor and decayed scholar. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... converting most of the tribes to at least nominal Mahometanism. Indeed the mountaineer was always strongly inclined to accept the fatalistic dogma so generally prevalent in the East, and now sums up his faith in the saying, "Every thing is kismet, destiny; and a man, whatever his inclinations, must bow to fate. Such is ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... every touch. Love! A strange haphazard thing was love—so spun between ecstacy and torture! A thing insidious, irresponsible, desperate. A flying sweetness, more poignant than anything on earth, more dark in origin and destiny. A thing without reason or coherence. A man's love-life—what say had he in the ebb and flow of it? No more than in the flights of autumn birds, swooping down, alighting here and there, passing on. The loves one left behind—even in a life by no means vagabond in love, as men's lives went! The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... reprieved a space, Looked on the builder's blocks about his base And bared his wounded breast in sign to say: "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... and conscientiously administered, all are safe, happy, and renowned. The measure of our country's fame may fill all our breasts. It is fame enough for us all to partake in her glory, if we will carry her character onward to its true destiny. But if the system is broken, its fragments must fall alike on all. Not only the cause of American liberty, but the grand cause of liberty throughout the whole earth, depends, in a great measure, on upholding the Constitution and Union of these States. If shattered and destroyed, no matter by ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... despair," replied Fa Fai. "Not idly is it written: 'Destiny has four feet, eight hands and sixteen eyes: how then shall the ill-doer with only two of each hope to escape?' An even more ignominious end may await Fang, should he escape drowning, for, conveniently placed by the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... Segur, I., 162.—La Fayette, "Memoires," II., 215. "Memorial" (note dictated by Napoleon). He states the reasons for and against, and adds, speaking of himself: "These sentiments, twenty-five years of age, confidence in his strength, his destiny, determined him." Bourrienne, I., 51: "It is certain that he has always bemoaned that day; he has often said to me that he would give years of his life to efface ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... reality upon the darkened places of his own nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted culture in the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man strove to make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation of humanity from a dungeon, the double discovery of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... is not a progressive science. That knowledge of our origin and of our destiny which we derive from revelation is indeed of very different clearness, and of very different importance. But neither is revealed religion of the nature of a progressive science. All Divine truth is, according to the doctrine of the Protestant Churches, recorded in certain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... vanquished in this struggle, thou shalt find thyself in the most wretched plight, and O son of Kunti, knowing this, and acting accordingly, shalt thou attain success. And knowing this wisdom and the destiny of all creatures, and following the conduct of thy ancestors, do thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... had several long talks; and I liked her so much. I am sure she is thoroughly good. I rejoice with all my heart that a destiny, so much more brilliant than anything that could have been expected for her, is ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... me feel faith in my PERSONAL destiny. And I do feel that there is something in one's special fate. I feel that I myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... but the greater number are small agriculturists, living in comfort upon the produce of their farms. The recent emigrants, although they have in some instances removed reluctantly, have readily acquiesced in their unavoidable destiny. They have found at once a recompense for past sufferings and an incentive to industrious habits in the abundance and comforts around them. There is reason to believe that all these tribes are friendly in their feelings toward the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... significantly. "You may one day become the most powerful woman in Europe, for your birth and your destiny call ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... former book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies. I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the inhabitants of those islands into three classes—the white, the black, and the colored, taking a nomenclature which I found there prevailing. By ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... because I take the fate of a whole fleet a little more likely to come to a solution than doubts in metaphysics; and if Lord Howe should at last bring home two or three French men-of-war, one would not be out of the way to receive them. In the mean time, let us chat as if the destiny of half Europe were not at ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... he said humbly, "that I speak of the high destiny of mankind. But the part that applies at the moment is that Sergeant Bellews must ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... its representatives; for in a community where wealth is nearly the only source of distinction, and where Mammon is consequently worshipped as the true god, the destiny of the unfortunate and of the vicious is nearly the same. And the 'poor-house' was used, as in other towns in New-England, as a house of correction, and at this time contained several professors of vice of each sex. Alas! of that sex ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... also played the part of conquerors in Italy, winning for themselves honors and power, and deeply affecting the destiny of the whole peninsula, where they extended the influence of Spain and established numerous branches of their family. From the old kings of Aragon they claimed descent, but so little is known of their origin that their history begins with ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... immoderate Heat, In which the frantick World does burn and sweat! This does the Lion Star, Ambitions rage; This Avarice, the Dog-Stars Thirst asswage; Every where else their fatal Power we see, They make and rule Man's wretched Destiny: They neither set, nor disappear, But tyrannize o'er all the Year; Whil'st we ne'er feel their Flame or Influence here. The Birds that dance from Bough to Bough, And sing above in every Tree, Are not from Fears and Cares more free, Than we who lie, or walk below, And should by right ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... noted that he seemed to be under the impression that he was a man of destiny. This phrase was a favorite with Napoleon, who often used it of himself. But the two men were so widely different in character and career, that it is with reluctance that one joins their names even for the moment that this phrase is used. Napoleon was ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if you understand me, had been in a queer way true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the killing of a Dago. It was so big that I didn't blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game and wanting to play a lone hand. That, I was pretty clear, was his intention. He had told me something which sounded big enough, but the real thing was so immortally big that he, ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... consequently man, not to mention the love to his neighbor incumbent on him, is called upon, both by reason and by his nature, to serve other people and the common good of humanity. I comprehended that the natural law of man is that according to which only he can fulfil destiny, and therefore be happy. I understood that this law has been and is broken hereby,—that people get rid of labor by force (like the robber bees), make use of the toil of others, directing this toil, not to the common weal, but to the private satisfaction of swift-growing desires; ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... of them. Party ties are loosened by it; and men are compelled to take sides for or against it, whether they will or not. Come from where he may, or come for what he may, he is compelled to show his hand. What is this mighty force? What is its history? and what is its destiny? Is it ancient or modern, transient or permanent? Has it turned aside, like a stranger and a sojourner, to tarry for a night? or has it come to rest with us forever? Excellent chances are here for speculation; and some of them are quite profound. We ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... accomplished, and the most fascinating woman of the epoch which bears her name. (He pauses, then resumes.) How strange a fatality directs the fate of each one of us! How fortunate is he who knows the limits that destiny assigns to him: limits beyond which ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... sober Jew, the gay and tipsy Gipsy, Shemite and Aryan—the one so ridiculously like and unlike the other, that we may almost wonder whether Humour does not enter into the Divine purpose and have its place in the Destiny of Man. For my own part, I shall always believe that the Heathen Mythology shows a superiority to any other, in one conception—that of Loki, who into the tremendous upturnings of the Universe always inspires a grim grotesqueness; a laughter ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... found a romancer full of consolation to any who might fear or suspect that the country's history did not quite match its destiny. He had enough erudition to lend a very considerable "thickness" to his scene, whether it was Annapolis or St. Louis or Kentucky or upland New England. He had a sense for the general bearings of this or that epoch; he had a firm, warm ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... the man's life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting on—and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... was shaping the destiny of parties and of the nation. It was an issue that politicians dodged and candidates evaded, that all parties avoided, that publicists feared, and that presidents and congressmen tried to hide under the tenuous fabric of their compromises. But it was an issue that persisted ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... "Take it from him," goes before the sentence, "Cast him out." A sinner is given over to himself, before he is given up to judgment. The first prepares the way for the second death; the process is now going on by which the destiny is decided. Now is the accepted time; now either salvation or ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... men of sin, whom Destiny That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island Where ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... of our lives has one controlling alternative, and no more. To illustrate this from the play of Hamlet: You will notice that, up to a certain point of time, the Prince governs his own destiny—at least, as far as the Ghost's commission is concerned, and this covers the whole drama. He is master and umpire of his circumstances, so that when two or more lines of action, or a line of action and a line of inaction, appear equally efficacious, he can select the one which appears to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... surface, and infinite variety of Bossuet, who, supported by vast and uninterrupted study, rose and rose until he gained the loftiest reaches of intellect and art, and commanded at pleasure every tone and every style. Pascal did not fulfil all his destiny. Besides the mathematics and natural philosophy he knew scarcely more than a little theology, and he barely passed through good society. It is true, Pascal passed away from earth quickly; but during his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... first, but had speeded up toward the end. None grew more haggard, toil-worn, or emaciated than he. With blistered hands, sweat-blinded eyes, parched mouths and fevered souls these men fought against all the odds of destiny. Half naked they strove, oppressed by heat, sun, flies, thirst, exhaustion. Tobacco was their only stay and solace. The Master, however, only chewed khat leaves; and as for "Captain Alden," she toiled with ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... dinner. I now took the most vigorous resolutions to observe the promise I had made my dear father. Now all was filially settled, to borrow my own words, I needed no monitor to tell me it would be foolish, useless, even wicked, not to reconcile myself to my destiny. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... making excuses,' I said. 'This is a psychological moment in the history of Vailima. You are the Man of Destiny.' ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... ground beneath a relentless heel. It was Elmendorf's belief that no manufacturer, employer, landlord, capitalist, or manager could by any possible chance deal justly with the employed. It was a conviction equally profound that manifest destiny had chosen him to be the modern Moses who was to lead his millions out of the house of bondage. It was astonishing that with purpose so high and aim so lofty he could find time and inclination to meddle with matters so far beneath him; ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... think it might be well to preserve me from temptation; the architect of the capitol had, besides, spoken obligingly of my design; and while he was thus hanging between two minds, Fortune suddenly stepped in, and Muskegon State capitol reversed my destiny. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... these theories, it may be said that stone axes, shell knives, and fish-hooks of pearl and tortoiseshell now in use are among the credentials of a people whose attributes and conditions are in line with those who, in other parts of the world, had their day and fulfilled their destiny ages upon ages ago, leaving as history etchings on ivory of the mammoth and the bone of the reindeer. Implements similar to those which are relics of a remote past elsewhere are here of everyday use and application. The Stone Age ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... again declared, though contradicted in the intervening chapters. In this and the following chapters we have a prolix statement of the births, deaths, and ages in the male line. They all take wives, beget sons, but nothing is said of the origin or destiny of the wives and daughters; they are incidentally mentioned merely as necessary factors in the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... unity and obedience, on the sin of spying into other people's affairs; and then proceeded, with becoming solemnity and in the names of God and the Icy Queen, to plunder Spanish ports and Spanish shipping. Drake believed he was by God's blessing carrying out a divinely governed destiny, and so perhaps he was; but it is difficult somewhat to reconcile his covetousness with his piety. But what is to be said of his Royal mistress whose crown and realm were saved to her by free sacrifices of blood ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... the latter having written to De Guiche a letter which had made the deepest impression upon him, and which he had read over and over again. "Strange, strange!" he murmured. "How irresponsible are the means by which destiny hurries men onward to their fate!" Leaving the window in order to approach nearer to the light, he once more read the letter he ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Mussulman, who promised me many good Offices, which he designed to do me when he became the Prime Minister, which was a Fortune bestowed on his Imagination by a Doctor very deep in the curious Sciences. At his repeated Sollicitations I went to learn my Destiny of this wonderful Sage. For a small Sum I had his Promise, but was requir'd to wait in a dark Apartment till he had run thro' the preparatory Ceremonies. Having a strong Propensity, even then, to Dreaming, I took a Nap upon the Sofa where I was placed, and had the following Vision, the Particulars ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... preserves it in a kind of cataleptic trance by the horrible expedient of the transfusion into it of blood drawn from other human beings by his semi-materialized Kamarupa, and thus postpones his final destiny by the commission of wholesale murder. As popular "superstition" again quite rightly supposes, the easiest and most effectual remedy in such a case is to exhume and burn the body, thus depriving the creature of his point d'appui. When the grave is opened the body usually ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... most sublime mysteries of religion, the most wonderful facts regarding the destiny of the soul, find their natural explanation in a clear understanding of this doctrine of metempsychosis, however strange and extraordinary it may at first appear. What more striking proof can be asked for, what stronger and more convincing reason than such agreement, concerning ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... seest me deserted by all mankind. I do not want to do wrong,—hear my prayer to be with my Karl in the future for which there seems to be no possibility now. O, harsh Fate, cruel destiny. No, my unhappy condition will never end. 'This I feel and recognize clearly: Life is not the greatest of blessings; but the greatest of evils is guilt.' (From Schiller's "Braut von Messina"). There is no salvation ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... exert an influence diametrically opposed to climatic surroundings; and, as a matter of fact, we are witnessing a struggle between our Anglo-Saxon heredities and our Australian environment. But such a conflict against our destiny is one in which the odds are overwhelmingly on one side. For of all forces, that of climate is the most powerful. It is true that man is able almost to remove mountains, and that he can create rivers in an arid land; but to endeavour to resist the dominating influence of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... crotchets of this born dialectician was a theory as to the importance of Christian names in determining the future behaviour and destiny of the children to whom they are given; and, whatever admixture of jest there might have been in some of his other fancies, in this his son affirms he was absolutely serious. He solemnly maintained ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... undignified, had jested with his intimates, had smoothed a frown from the rugged brow of WELLINGTON or held his own against the eagle glance of GREY; the chamber where the great QUEEN, conscious of her august destiny, had consecrated to grief such moments as could be spared from the needs of Empire; the chamber where her son had laboured for peace and extended the bounds of friendship; the chamber where a DISRAELI, repaying scorn with scorn, may have spread his snares, and a GLADSTONE, overwhelmed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... day foraging parties were dispersed to the nearer towns. In vain we schooled ourselves into the belief, that there was nothing out of the common order of nature in the strife we witnessed; our disasterous and overwhelming destiny turned the best of us to cowards. Death had hunted us through the course of many months, even to the narrow strip of time on which we now stood; narrow indeed, and buffeted by storms, was our footway overhanging ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... how close the blood tie between two beings, even twins, each soul comes into the world alone, and with a separate life destiny to work out. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron. We have all learned that greatness is negligent and contemptuous, and that in Courts life is often languished away in ungratified expectation; but he that approaches greatness, or glitters in a Court, imagines that destiny has at last exempted him from the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... taking up arms he was acting only in self-defense and for the country's safety. But now he sent another letter reiterating that he had no evil intentions to him or the government. "I am now going out to seek a more agreeable destiny than you are pleased to design me," he added. As to the money he owed him he enclosed an order ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... sacred cohorts enlisted in the service of the goddess, that previously in the Stoic philosophy human existence was frequently likened to a campaign, and that even the astrologers called the man who submitted to destiny and renounced all revolt a ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... were worse fates in the world than to be travellers of a night, with the destiny of such a room as ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... was about sixty hours off; and this was the first word that Philippa had heard of her destiny. To whom was she to be handed over after this summary fashion? Would the Countess, of her unspeakable goodness, let her know that? But the Countess could not tell her; she had not yet heard. She thought there were two ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... after-reflection; and here am I in London for the first time as a free man, and, to my own mind, master of my destiny. It really seems at moments as if one might pat it into any form one chose; and it really seems at times as if one were an insect without wings at the bottom of some unfathomable cranny. The fog of my first ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... a secret feeling in woman's heart that she is in her wrong place; that it is she who ought to worship the man, and not the man her; and when she becomes properly conscious of her destiny, has not he a right to be conscious of his? If the grey hens will stand round in the mire clucking humble admiration, who can blame the old blackcock for dancing and drumming on the top of a moss hag, with outspread wings and flirting tail, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, was invested with the margravate of Brandenburg and the electoral dignity. The Hohenzollerns, a few exceptions aside, have been a thrifty, energetic and successful family. Slowly, but with the precision of destiny, their motto, "From rock to sea"—once apparently an idle boast—has realized itself to the full, until they now stand foremost in Europe. It would pertain rather to a history of the Prussian monarchy than to a sketch like the present to trace, even in outline, the steps by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... on the scene of action a man of destiny. Cromwell, seizing the opportunity, turned everything toward democracy, and ruled republicans, Puritans, and royalists with such an iron hand that his painful democracy came to a sudden close through reaction under the rule of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... in the poem; and out of these fifteen, the epithet is attached to it once, and that for the express purpose of recalling the scene in which she had been consecrated by her brother's solemn adjuration, that she would fulfil her destiny, and become a soul, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Seine, whence the coach was to start. We parted with regret, and we did not meet again till the year 1792. During these eight years we maintained an active correspondence; but so little did I anticipate the high destiny which, after his elevation, it was affirmed the wonderful qualities of his boyhood plainly denoted, that I did not preserve one of the letters he wrote to me at that period, but tore them up as soon ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... me. Democracy is the goal of the race, the destiny of the world. American Democracy is but a hundred years old, yet not one crowned head is left on the western hemisphere. Crowns, thrones, scepters, titles, privileges belong to the past; they are doomed. The people already rule the world. Emperors, kings and presidents ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... are proceeding is by no means the same for all of them. In the current German conception, e.g., as seen in the utterances of its many and urgent spokesmen, peace appears to be of the general nature of a truce between nations, whose God-given destiny it is, in time, to adjust a claim to precedence by wager of battle. They will sometimes speak of it, euphemistically, with a view to conciliation, as "assurance of the national future," in which the national future is taken to mean an opportunity for ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... conservative, she could try first how she liked being a conservative's wife. If Olive troubled herself little about Adeline, she troubled herself more about Basil Ransom; she said to herself that since he hated women who respected themselves (and each other), destiny would use him rightly in hanging a person like Adeline round his neck. That would be the way poetic justice ought to work, for him—and the law that our prejudices, when they act themselves out, punish us in doing so. Olive considered all this, as it was her effort to consider ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... everyday trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell and judgment—were often confounded together into one appalling nightmare. He seemed to himself to stand before the Great White Throne; he was called on, poor little devil, to recite some form of words, on which his destiny depended; his tongue stuck, his memory was blank, hell gaped for him; and he would awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his knees ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... independent spaces of time. We have his first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with Vivian Grey (1826) and closed with Venetia (1837). We have a second epoch, opening with Coningsby (1844) and ending with Tancred (1847), during which time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted for. It ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... with some wild notion of defying fate by marrying out of hand and so settling for ever the disappointments of the past—and whatever chances of happiness there might be waiting for her in the lap of destiny. Settling them in favour of one most final and lasting disappointment of them ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... other an instant before, standing flushed and expectant before the untrodden road of the future. She heard again the wings of happiness rustling unseen about her, and she felt again the great hope which is the challenge that youth flings to destiny. Life rose before her, not as she had found it, but as she had once believed it to be. The days when little things had not filled her thoughts returned in the fugitive glow of her memory—for she, also, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Cherokees were the most powerful tribe of western Carolina and the adjoining region, preceding and during our Revolutionary war, frequently requiring the strong arm of military force to chastise them and teach them, by dear experience, the superiority and growing destiny of their "pale ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... juries the world over. They saw the brush-mark, no doubt, but they missed the breeze that came with it—was its life, really—a breeze that swept through and out of him, blowing side by side with genius and good health—a wind of destiny, perhaps, that will carry him to climes that ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... other side of those lofty summits one might look down on the long-sought Western Sea. Never suspecting that another thousand miles of wilderness and mountain fastness lay between him and his quest, young De la Verendrye wanted to cross the Great Divide. Destiny decreed otherwise. The raid of the Bows against the Snakes ended in a fiasco. No Snakes were to be found at their usual winter hunt. Had they decamped to massacre the Bow women and children left in the valley to the rear? The Bows fled back to their wives in a panic; so De la Verendrye could ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... will at once conjecture that the Great Architect is raising up the materials of a new world, which, from aught we can yet perceive, will not less indicate his power and goodness than that which we now inhabit. How readily, then, can imagination fashion out the future destiny of our globe, on the supposition that the conflagration by which its presently inhabited portions are expected to be destroyed, shall not be so complete as to annihilate it from the universe! Or, believing what is usually understood, by that event, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... customs of idolatry are the same in all ages, they only differ in language and adaptability of climate, and that with the fall of judicial astrology, idolatry received its greatest blow, for while men thought that priests could control destiny, they feared them—but this idea destroyed, it removed the terror which so long had existed as an immediate object betwixt the man and this ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... for one whose future, maybe, was not too certain; if it is declined, then they congratulate themselves on the high morale or strong common-sense of a kinswoman who refuses to be won by gold, or to link her destiny with an ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... and if the night is stormy the number out is ridiculously small. Yet all profess to believe that the Lord of heaven and earth will be present, and that it is His will that they should be. Your Bible teaches that the Being who controls completely the destiny of every person will be in the midst of those gathered in His name, to hear and answer their petitions. If this is true, then no earthly ruler was every so neglected and insulted, so generally ignored, as this very Deity to whom you ascribe unlimited power, and from whom you say you ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... enterprise of December we failed to find a General's uniform becomingly worn. A book might be written on the part which gold lace plays in the destiny ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... poise and vivacity which allow the whole machinery to play, he will not need extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all opinions in his own life. Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour. We go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on our heel to save our life; but a book, or a bust, or only the sound of a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe in will: my finger-ring shall be the seal of Solomon: fate ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... anguish, called forth to assist their leader, and the wail of the coronach was again heard in that dismal and portentous night: for portentous it was. This crime, the first signal offence of Simon Fraser, stamped his destiny. Its effects followed him through life: it entailed others: it was the commencement of a catalogue of iniquities almost unprecedented in the career of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... not speak, but watched him as he lay, his longing eyes fixed upon the words before him, with an absorbed and admiring gaze, as if all else were forgotten. His soul was hanging its eternal destiny on the words of God. A few days before this he had said ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... fundamental truths of religious faith was profound, and every student of his writings will testify to the great constructive value of his work. He builded upon an ancient foundation a new and nobler structure of human destiny, solid in its simplicity and beautiful ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights. This ends the case. Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the young girl, whom chance had placed before this simple testimony of a sorrow now long past, deeply moved by the sad tale of love, filled with tender pity for the dead Rafaella, her fellow in youth and beauty and perhaps in destiny, finding in her heart the tender impulse to kneel without a word, as if beside the grave of a friend. The daylight's last rays streaming in through the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... be dragged through the mire of a divorce court; that the treasures of a princely home were to pass away from the race that had accumulated them, under the strokes of an auctioneer's hammer? Who could have dreamt that this fine intellect and loving heart would follow the lord of their destiny to Hades, and wander there for evermore distracted, in the land of shadows, where there is no light of the sun to show the way, no firm ground to stay the tottering feet and groping hands? As for these two fair sisters in Watteau style of blue and pink, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... knew, be only so very faint they could leave no clue to our destiny. The first ray of hope that shot through him was finding one of our little notes, though, for some time, they thought it was but the writing of ancient days, and not meant for them now. But when they found ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... are his powers, what is his destiny, and for what purpose and for what object was he created? Let us enter the laboratory of the chemist and commence our labors. Let us take down the crucible and begin the analysis, and endeavor to solve this important problem. In studying ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... the door of Saint Marcel or Saint Anne, really represent Mysticism, Astrology, and Alchemy, the three great sciences of the Middle Ages. Today you find people who say, 'Are you quite sure that the stars have an influence on the destiny of man?' But, messieurs, without entering here into details reserved for the adept, in what way is this spiritual influence stranger than that corporal influence which certain planets, the moon, for example, exercise on the organs of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans



Words linked to "Destiny" :   lot, day of reckoning, causal agency, predestination, doom, line of destiny, portion, failure, condition, causal agent, bad luck, good fortune, good luck, occult, luckiness, doomsday, misfortune, supernatural, occurrence, kismat, fate, circumstances, inevitable, happening, providence, fortune, manifest destiny, occurrent, tough luck, natural event, luck



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