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noun
Fate  n.  
1.
A fixed decree by which the order of things is prescribed; the immutable law of the universe; inevitable necessity; the force by which all existence is determined and conditioned. "Necessity and chance Approach not me; and what I will is fate." "Beyond and above the Olympian gods lay the silent, brooding, everlasting fate of which victim and tyrant were alike the instruments."
2.
Appointed lot; allotted life; arranged or predetermined event; destiny; especially, the final lot; doom; ruin; death. "The great, th'important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome." "Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown." "The whizzing arrow sings, And bears thy fate, Antinous, on its wings."
3.
The element of chance in the affairs of life; the unforeseen and unestimated conitions considered as a force shaping events; fortune; esp., opposing circumstances against which it is useless to struggle; as, fate was, or the fates were, against him. "A brave man struggling in the storms of fate." "Sometimes an hour of Fate's serenest weather strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams."
4.
pl. (Myth.) The three goddesses, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, sometimes called the Destinies, or Parcaewho were supposed to determine the course of human life. They are represented, one as holding the distaff, a second as spinning, and the third as cutting off the thread. Note: Among all nations it has been common to speak of fate or destiny as a power superior to gods and men swaying all things irresistibly. This may be called the fate of poets and mythologists. Philosophical fate is the sum of the laws of the universe, the product of eternal intelligence and the blind properties of matter. Theological fate represents Deity as above the laws of nature, and ordaining all things according to his will the expression of that will being the law.
Synonyms: Destiny; lot; doom; fortune; chance.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fate" Quotes from Famous Books



... accoutrements, which we would add to the clothes bought with the king's money. You are conferring a great obligation upon America, and affording her great additional means of contributing to the advancement of the grand common cause. Every citizen must be strongly interested in the fate of our islands, and must fear the effects, which would follow if an expedition should go out from New York. It is enough to know that country, whose independence is so important to the honor and safety of France, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... their respective orbits, and say thus far shall you legislate, and no further. Leave to the people an independent judiciary, and they will prove that man is capable of governing himself,—they will be saved from what has been the fate of all other republics, and they will disprove the position that governments of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... for all things," said the millionaire solemnly. "And I must say that, with the fate of my collection and of the coronet trembling in the balance, this does not seem to me a season for ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... fate that might befall him at Cairo, resolved to anticipate the danger. On the return journey, while Kotuz was on the hunting-field alone, he begged for the gift of a Mongol slave girl, and, taking his hand to kiss for the promised favor, seized hold of it while his accomplices stabbed him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... his villains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness, beauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success, and distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the blows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death is swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... whole business was now over; but in this we were mistaken. The news of our duel, which had spread in the town, raised such an uproar as had never been heard, even at the noisiest election. Would you believe it?—The fate of the election turned upon this duel. The common people, one and all, declared that they would not vote either for Mr. Luttridge or Mr. Freke, because as how—but I need not repeat all the platitudes that they said. In short, neither ribands nor brandy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... intellectual promise; one of those fortunate characters whom an early death so canonizes in the remembrance of their companions, that the perfect fulfilment of a long life would scarcely give them a higher place. Jonathan Cilley, of my own class,—whose untimely fate is still mournfully remembered,—a person of very marked ability and great social influence, was another of Pierce's friends. All these have long been dead. There are others, still alive, who would meet Franklin Pierce, at this day, with as warm a pressure of the hand, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... his highest mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls, the free life continues while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair and all the servile captains of tyrant Fate afford the burghers of that dauntless city new spectacles of beauty." In like manner, the world of Greece, in which Palamas lives, "our home," as he calls it, may have its dreadful silences that are "full of moans," moans vague and ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... my heart yearns towards you. Pity that she did not wed with one of her own land, so that you might not have had the blood of the accursed race in your veins. But it was the will of the All-Powerful, and what can we avail against fate?" ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... scarf, replaces it on the chair; then with the half-warmed bottle, she retreats. DICK, in the swing, sits thinking of his fate. Suddenly from behind the hollow tree he sees Joy darting forward in her day dress with her hair about her neck, and her skirt all torn. As he springs towards her, she turns ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a saving to him, of time wasted, of disgust endured! And indeed it is a solacement he has often longed for, in these dreary operations of his. But the Fates appointed otherwise; we have all to accept our Fate!— ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... But Allegra I don't know about; I can't think what to wish for the child. Of course the normal thing to wish for any sweet little girl is that two kind foster parents will come along to take the place of the real parents that Fate has robbed her of. But in this case it would be cruel to steal her away from her brothers. Their love for the baby is pitiful. You see, they have brought her up. The only time I ever hear them laugh is when ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... and collected the rent of me. I thought it a hardship, for I had purposely chosen an inconspicuous situation where I should not be found, and it was long past the end of the season, when no company should have had the heart to collect rent for its chairs. But I met my fate without murmuring, and as the young man who sold me a ticket good for the whole day at a penny, was obviously not pressed with business, I tried to recoup myself ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... of his business was to help the convicts, who applied more and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so many applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of them, and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which at last roused his interest even more than the three first. This ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... Between Petersburg, their point of starting, and their destination, at Burkesville, the distance was fifty-three miles. The roads were bad, and the troops tired with two days' fighting; but they pushed on with determination in this race which was destined to decide the fate of two armies. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... Physiognomy, and the judgment given thereby concerning the dispositions and inclinations of men and women, it will be convenient here to show how all these things come to pass; and how it is that the secret inclinations and future fate of men and women may be known from the consideration of the several parts of the bodies. They arise from the power and dominion of superior powers to understand the twelve signs of the Zodiac, whose signs, characters ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... serve the needs of growth. Personality, character, is more than subject-matter. Not knowledge or information, but self-realization, is the goal. To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion. Moreover, subject-matter never can be got into the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within. Literally, we ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey

... the banks of the town now split in two, I drove to the opposite side of the river into the country to my abandoned home, for I thought I might still succeed in transporting to the town the rest of the articles I had left behind, and so preserve them from a doubtful fate. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... protest against the first persecution by the Catholic Church—the torture and execution of those unhappy Priscillianist fanatics, whom the Spanish Bishops (the spiritual forefathers of the Inquisition) had condemned in the name of the God of love. Martin wept over the fate of the Priscillianists. Happily he was no prophet, or his head would have become (like Jeremiah's) a fount of tears, could he have foreseen that the isolated atrocity of those Spanish Bishops would have become the example and the rule, legalized ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... thy restless wavering state Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit! Witness this present prison whither fate Hath borne me, and the joys I quit. Thou causedest the guilty to be loosed From bands wherewith are innocents enclosed; Causing the guiltless to be strait reserved, And freeing those that death had well deserved: But by her envy can be nothing wrought, So God send to my ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... remainder of that sad day Catharine sat on the grass under a shady tree, her eyes mournfully fixed on the slow-flowing waters, and wondering at her own hard fate in being thus torn from her home and its dear inmates. Bad as she had thought her separation from her father and mother and her brothers, when she first left her home to become a wanderer on the Rice Lake Plains, how much more dismal now was her situation, snatched from the dear companions who ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... life as duty requires, no doubt, but not because duty requires. On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one, strong in mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it—not from inclination or fear, but from duty—then his ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... be up and doing, With a heart, for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... and wet to the skin; his horse had cast a shoe far from any smithy. Long Jim alone came to the door to greet him. The shopman, on whose doltish honesty Mahony would have staked his head, had profited by his absence to empty the cash-box and go off on the spree.— Even one of the cats had met its fate in an old shaft, where its ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... heard from Peter and Paul that they, too, must die as martyrs. The sight of Chilo on the cross had convinced him that even a martyr's death could be sweet; hence he wished it for Lygia and himself as the change of an evil, sad, and oppressive fate for a better. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... replied Musard. "The inference, in view of what has happened, seems rather that the door was unlocked to-day, and Tufnell stumbled upon the fact by a lucky chance—by Fate, if you like. At least it ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... his inability to carry out that trade was mingled with the young man's general bitterness of regret because he had challenged Fate so boldly. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... Prelate, whom Charles I. was wont to call "the good man," and whom he declared to be his greatest comfort in his most afflictive situation, that he delivered his sentiments without disguise to the King, on the subject of Lord Strafford's fate, telling him plainly, that "he ought to do nothing with an unsatisfied conscience, upon any consideration in the world." His character is thus beautifully pourtrayed by Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter to the Queen of Bohemia. "There is in him no tumour, no sourness, no distraction ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... "natural evolution" of business conditions, as inevitable as the great changes in the physical world. If this is so man and society must recognize the facts, must waste no efforts vainly in fighting against fate, but should accept the trusts and realize their possibilities for good. And these are declared to be great, for it is assumed that without the trusts all of the economies of large production must be sacrificed. Irresistible economic forces, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... either fears his fate too much Or his deserts too small, That dares not put it to the touch, To gain or ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... natural history. The very schoolboys when they went out into the world, and the young civilians of Fort William College, enriched his collections. To Jabez, his son in Amboyna, we find him thus writing:—"I have already informed you of the luckless fate of all the animals you have sent. I know of no remedy for the living animals dying, but by a little attention to packing them you may send skins of birds and animals of every kind, and also seeds and roots. I lately received a parcel of seeds from Moore (a large boy who, you may ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... entirely empty and extremely transparent. Sometimes two secondary spores are thus engendered from the same spore, and their pedicels may be implanted on the same or on different sides, so as to be parallel in the former case, and growing in opposite directions in the latter. The fate of these secondary ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... about 1590 an English translation, which was supplemented by various English ballads on the same subject, and it was an Englishman—Shakespeare's great contemporary, the poet Christopher Marlowe—who was himself, as you know, a man of Faust-like temperament, and not unlike him in his fate—being killed in a drunken brawl—who first dramatized the story. His brilliant and lurid play, 'The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus' follows very closely most of the details given in the German Faust-books. Its poetical beauties (and they are many) are unfortunately, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... and at sea, of your workmen and employers at home, your women, your factory workers, your soldiers' wives, your women of the richer and educated classes, your landowners and politicians. Are you yet fully awake—yet fully in earnest, in this crisis of England's fate? 'Weary Titan' that she is, with her age-long history behind her, and her vast responsibilities by sea and land, is she shouldering her load in this incredible war, as she must shoulder it; as her friends—the ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Folly Joubert I mean, who married when she was eighteen one Johannes Olivier, a youth with hair like an Irishman—all red. I had known her somewhat, and she was just that kind of girl in whom one feels the thrust of a fate. She was thin, for one thing, and without any of the comfortable comeliness that makes young men doubtful and old men sure. She had a face that was always rapt, lips that parted of themselves as if in wonder ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... 20,000 ounces, out of each caxon or chest, being almost a fifth part of the ore; but it has since declined much, and is now [1720] only reckoned among the ordinary sort. Those of Lipes have had a similar fate. Those at Potosi now yield but little, and are worked at a very heavy expence, owing to their excessive depth. Although the mines here are far diminished in their productiveness, yet the quantity of ore which has been formerly wrought, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... She had been saved once, and she dared not tamper with fate again. At every thought of Wally, speeding back to Boston, she drew ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... Nabb and I (almost fainting) had entered; then he opened the third door, and then I was introduced to a filthy place called a coffee-room, which I exchanged for the solitary comfort of a little dingy back-parlor, where I was left for a while to brood over my miserable fate. Fancy the change between this and Berkeley Square! Was I, after all my pains, and cleverness, and perseverance, cheated at last? Had this Mrs. Manasseh been imposing upon me, and were the words of the wretch I met at the table-d'hote at Leamington only ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while as a PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as a CHRISTIAN he of course believed everything taught by Mother Church—devils and all—and so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... that kept any measures with the Romish Church as Apostates. He laid his account with contradictions. Feb. 23, 1641, he writes to Israel Caski[669], "Those who had the same design that I have were generally evil-treated by both parties, and met with the fate of such as would separate combatants: but the God of peace will judge them with justice. They have also on their side pious and learned men, whose merit outweighs the number of the others.—I believe, says he to his brother[670], ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... years by reason of a strong temperature, or some mixture of business, which may divert his cogitations: but at the last laesa imaginatio, his phantasy is crazed, and now habituated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate, the scene alters upon a sudden, fear and sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so by little and little, by that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, melancholy ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... far from sharing Mrs. Upjohn's sentiments. Mr. Halloway did, it is true, belong to the wrong Church, but there was a strong suspicion among them that neither had this man sinned, nor his parents, that he was born to so grievous a fate. It was rather his misfortune. And as for the rest, he was thoroughly a gentleman; was excellently well educated; and was, moreover, comely to look upon, and eminently agreeable in his bearing. No; Joppa was far from begrudging Mr. White his departure to the land of the blessed. It was time ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... door was just slightly ajar; Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading- lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of besides ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... wedding and his funeral feast Are one, so Fate hath said; Death bore him from the brides of earth The brides of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... bottle—in the desperate and solitary excess, which had so cheated him of his self-control, that the lurking taint which his life among the savages had left in his disposition, and the deadly rancor which his recent discovery of his sister's fate had stored up in his heart, escaped from concealment, and betrayed themselves in that half-drunken, half-sober occupation of scouring the rifle-barrel, which it had so greatly amazed Zack to witness, and which the lad had so suddenly and strangely suspended by ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... been that, just at the most critical moment, they reached a "windrow," a strip of ground upon which a storm had hurled down the trunks of trees in wild confusion. Hastily abandoning their horses to their fate, the two friends got in among the thick fallen timber, where they concealed themselves, and listened breathlessly while the Indians with shouts pursued, and attempted to capture the coveted animals. But they did not succeed. A cloud of dust heralded the approach of a party of men, who with shouts ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various

... the discourses he had heard Cyril had gone out depressed rather than inspirited. They had been pitched in one tone. The terrible scourge that raged round them was held up as a punishment sent by the wrath of God upon a sinful people, and the congregation were warned to prepare themselves for the fate, that might at any moment be theirs, by repentance and humiliation. The preacher to whom Cyril was now listening spoke in an ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... Anger of Fate, have pity and forbear, Or at the least hold back thy hand and spare! I sally forth to seek my daily bread And find my living vanished into air. How many a fool's exalted to the stars, Whilst sages hidden in the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... yield. One of those unforeseen events which are the work of Providence, was destined to decide my fate. Several times, already, in compliance with Arthur's urgent entreaties, I had met him at night time in a little pavilion in our garden. This pavilion contained a billiard-room and a spacious gallery in which my brother practised fencing and pistol shooting with his masters and friends. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... O desecrate, O labour-wounded feet and hands, O blood poured forth in pledge to fate Of nameless lives in divers lands, O slain and spent and sacrificed People, ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate. With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... of passion and revenge, who seemed to have some mysterious longing for those gloomy shores he came from, who had sung with such exquisite pathos "A wee bird cam' to our ha' door?" Her cheek had turned white when she heard of the fate of the son of Maclean: surely that sensitive and vivid imagination could not belong to this audacious girl, with her laughing, and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... The fate of the accused depended on the miraculous turning of the psalter. If the direction was from left to right he was innocent; if from right to left, he was guilty. It would appear from the prayer, in which the priest invoked Divine revelation, that he ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... love presumptuous shall by death atone. Now what you question of my ancient friend, With truth I answer; thou the truth attend. Learn what I heard the sea-born seer relate, Whose eye can pierce the dark recess of fate Sole in an isle, imprison'd by the main, The sad survivor of his numerous train, Ulysses lies; detain'd by magic charms, And press'd unwilling in Calypso's arms. No sailors there, no vessels to convey, No oars to cut the immeasurable way.' This told Atrides, and he told no ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... fate of the colony of veterans at Camalodunum, now Colchester or Maldon. A particular account of this revolt is given in the 14th book ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... the gentlemanly Wilks, and that very talented vagabond, George Powell. Powell it was who liked his brandy not wisely but too well, and who made such passionate love on the stage that Sir John Vanbrugh used to wax nervous for the fate of the actresses. One great artiste was missing, however. Mrs. Verbruggen was ill in London, and that shining exponent of light comedy, who Cibber said was mistress of more variety of humour than he ever knew in any one ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... chickens circled higher at their coming, and the big snake lifted his head and rattled angrily. It sank in sinuous coils at the report of McLean's revolver, and together he and Freckles stood beside Black Jack. His fate was evident and ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... vitro : glass (material). flanko : side. globo : globe. sorto : fate. kolekt- : collect. radio : ray. prepar- : prepare. kupolo : cupola, dome. pes- : weigh (something). rublo : rouble. ekzist- : exist. etagxo : story (of building). pere- : perish. doloro : pain, ache. proksime ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing police patrol was close behind, treading on its tail and indignantly clanging it to turn out, which it could not possibly do. To avoid erasing the little citizen, the patrol man had to pull sharply out; and this manoeuvre, as Fate had written it, brought him full upon the great dog Behemoth, who, having slipped across the tracks, stood gravely waiting for the flying wagon to pass. Thus it became a clear case of sauve qui peut, and the devil take the hindermost. There was nothing in the world for Behemoth to do but wildly ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... a suspicious and suspected neutrality, but the Government is at their mercy whenever they join the Opposition, or, indeed, if they keep aloof. Such a state of things cannot go on very long, and the fate of the Government must be settled one way or the other. Every day produces fresh indications of Peel's superiority, and his capacity for the lead in the House of Commons, but he does not appear to have gained much in those points where he was most deficient—cordiality and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... will write to him; and depict with so much clearness and truth the real situation of France, as will make him sensible, that the best thing that can be done is, to abandon the Bourbons to their unlucky fate, and leave us to arrange matters with Bonaparte in our own way. When you are ready to set off, come to me, and I will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... his face. His soul is damned—is sentenced to perpetual consciousness of itself. What is there that he can do next? Turning round and round inside himself, learning how little worth while it is, there is but one fate left open to such a man, a blind and desperate lunge into the roar of the life he cannot see, for facts—the usual L.H.D., Ph.D. fate. If he piles around him the huge hollow sounding outsides of things in the universe that ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... gold may not be compared to Sejanus's horse, if we consider its passage through the world, and the fate of those nations which have been successively ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... to be, thanked him, and strolled on in the direction of the Three Mariners aforesaid, apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than about the fate of his note, now that the momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing slowly down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Jane saw with some interest the note brought into the dining-room ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... 3.20. Started again at 5 and marched till 7. In all covered 9 miles. Surface seemed to have improved during the last part of the march till just before camping time, when Bowers, who was leading, plunged into soft snow. Several of the others following close on his heels shared his fate, and soon three ponies were plunging and struggling in a drift. Garrard's pony, which has very broad feet, found hard stuff beyond and then my pony got round. Forde and Keohane led round on comparatively hard ground well ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... feel the outrage and wrong of Tillie's arrested education, when her father could well afford to keep her in school until she was grown, if he would; so stirred was her warm Southern blood at the thought of the fate to which poor Tillie seemed doomed—the fate of a household drudge with not a moment's leisure from sunrise to night for a thought above the grubbing existence of a domestic beast of burden (thus it all looked to this woman from Kentucky), ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... Maids of February The Loveless Youth The Wind Flower The Fate of Hyacinthus St. Leonard and the Fiery Snake A Fair Prisoner The Ungrateful Traveler The Star of Bethlehem The Angel's Gift The Holy Hay The Search for Gold The ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James

... Passes; and, as far as I know, no critic has ever thought enough of Browning as an artist to point it out. It is a gross falsification of the whole beauty of Pippa Passes to make the Monseigneur and his accomplice in the last act discuss a plan touching the fate of Pippa herself. The whole central and splendid idea of the drama is the fact that Pippa is utterly remote from the grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms. To make her in the end turn out to be the niece of one of them, is like a whiff from an Adelphi melodrama, an excellent ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... Its fate has been strangely wrapped up in the history of its women, for as it passed from the Avenals to the Vernons by marriage, so again, three centuries later, by a similar process, it passed from the Vernon family to the Rutland, which ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... table-ale than usual, and is very sorry but sociable. Cook's state of mind is similar. She promises a little fry for supper, and struggles about equally against her feelings and the onions. Towlinson begins to think there's a fate in it, and wants to know if anybody can tell him of any good that ever came of living in a corner house. It seems to all of them as having happened a long time ago; though yet the child lies, calm and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... taste for intrigue. Into the house she sped and to her room. The Professor and Ardelia were in bed and asleep. When Jarvis came in she descended, to inquire about the fate of their play, with the calm ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... the poor chap went on, that he was getting angry, and doing himself harm. That was so. Every step he took in his narrative sharpened the edge of the fate which cut him off. He would have made a success of it if he could—but he had been really broken before he broke his back, and the ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... account God favoured and prospered him, permitting him to attain the noble age of ninety, and to die peacefully and tranquilly at Jamaica, whilst smoking his pipe in his shady arbour, with his smiling plantation of sugar-canes full in view. How unlike the fate of Harry Morgan to that of Lolonois, a being as daring and enterprising as the Welshman, but a monster without ruth or discrimination, terrible to friend and foe, who perished by the hands, not of the Spaniards, but of the Indians, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... these latter days, that mere bald truth would be hissed as indelicate. But for the memory of those early years, when we expended as much law and thought over the ownership of a hay-byre as we should now over the fate of a rebellious city, I will try and speak plain to you even now, Deucalion. Tell me, old friend, what ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... My fate is lying at the wharf in the shape of the Pacific Mail Steamer Costa Rica, and soon to me Hawaii-nei will be but a dream. "Summer isles of Eden!" My heart warms towards them as I leave them, for they have been more like home than any part of the world since I left England. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... secure in their fastnesses, often allured fugitive or wandering tribes on to uninhabited islets on pretense of ferrying them across, and there left them to perish for the sake of their goods. Sekomi, the chief of the Bamangwato, was, when a child, in danger of meeting this fate; but a man still living had compassion on him, and enabled his mother to escape with him by night. The river is so large that the sharpest eye can not tell the difference between an island and the bend of the opposite bank; but Sebituane, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... she added. "In the first place, though I should stay till dark there will be no arrival; because I feel in my heart, Fate has written it down in to-day's page of her eternal book, that I am not to have the pleasure I long for. In the second place, if he stepped in this moment, my presence here would be a chagrin to him, and the consciousness that it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... qualify the severity of their fate. Their unbelief is only partial and temporary, and God's purpose is to restore all. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... good fortune, Prince, Ivan Ivanovitch had early made himself a career. As that career progressed, his ambition had met with a success which left nothing more to be sought for in that direction. From his earliest youth upward he had prepared himself to fill the exalted station in the world to which fate actually called him later; wherefore, although in his prosperous life (as in the lives of all) there had been failures, misfortunes, and cares, he had never lost his quietness of character, his elevated tone of thought, or ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... click of the needles and the tick of the clock were the only sounds audible, and the ex-pilot had just arrived at the conclusion that his friend had abandoned him to his fate, when there came a low tapping ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... doom, but some other and unimportant noise he had heard. The final reward of the blessed is expressed by the repose of one small figure in the lap of a colossal effigy, which I understood to mean rest in Abraham's bosom; but the artist has bestowed far more interest and feeling upon the fate of the damned, who are all boiling in rows of immense pots. It is doubtful (considering the droll aspect of heavenly bliss as figured in the one small saint and the large patriarch) whether the artist intended the condition of his sinners to be ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... she said, 'that here am I - destiny embodied, a norn, a fate, a providence - and have no guess upon which side I shall declare myself! What other woman in my place would not be prejudiced, and think herself committed? But, thank Heaven! I was born just!' Otto's windows were bright among the rest, and she looked on them with ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch To win or ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Ensign Michigan Militia," pursued Grantham reading. "This then is conclusive, and we have to congratulate ourselves that one at least of two of the vilest scoundrels this country ever harboured, has at length met the fate he merited." ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... grew fiercer in the enemy's rear. Every volley could be heard distinctly. There would occasionally be a lull for a moment, and then the uproar would break out again with increased violence. If the enemy is too strong for us to attack, what must be the fate of Rosecrans' four regiments, cut off from us, and struggling against such odds? Hours passed; and as the last straggling shots and final silence told us the battle had ended, gloom settled down on every soldier's ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... an accent of frightful despondency, "fate shows us no mercy. I have been watching over Marie-Anne, though from a distance; and this very evening I was coming to say to her: 'Beware, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... is tested by stress and trial Since the finger of time on the endless dial Began its rounds, and the orbs to move In the boundless vast, and the sunbeams clove The chaos; but only by fate's denial Are fathomed the fathomless depths of love. Man is the rugged and wrinkled oak, And woman the trusting and tender vine— That clasps and climbs till its arms entwine The brawny arms of the sturdy stoke. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... his return, receiving further promotion, he set out on a third voyage of farther exploration in the Pacific, making many discoveries as far N. as Behring Strait; lost his life, on his way home, in a dispute with the natives, at Owhyhee, in the Sandwich Islands, being savagely murdered, a fate which befell him owing to a certain quickness of temper he had displayed, otherwise he was a man of great kindness of heart, and his men were warmly attached to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... into lunch without announcing his intention or previously ascertaining those of his friends has no right to quarrel with fate if he finds an empty house. Thus philosophically I reflected as I turned away from the house in profound discontent, demanding of the universe in general why Mrs. Hornby need have perversely chosen my first free day to go gadding into the country, and above all, why she must needs spirit away the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... ever. When Thucydides announced that he intended his history to be a "possession for all time," there was no mistaking the tone of authority. But to be enthroned in state, to receive the homage of the admiring multitude, and then to be rejected as a pretender,—that is indeed a sorry fate, and one that may well make us pause before envying literary despots their titles. The more closely a writer shrouds himself from view, the more eager are his readers to get a sight of him. The loss of an arm or a leg would be ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... he muttered at last. "That's a prisoner, sure as fate, that they are lashing and goading along ahead of them. Who on earth can it be? Oh, God grant it isn't the captain!" Rapidly then he swept the plateau southward, searching the foothills of the range ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King

... so," answered Benita, "though a fate may cling to certain things or places, perhaps. At any rate, I think that it is of no use turning back now, even if we had anywhere to turn, so we may as well go through with the venture and await its end. Give me the water-bottle, please. I ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... of the great city, racing toward its haven, rushing like a falling comet, some one blundered. The world called it a disaster; the official statement, an accident, an open switch; the press called it an outrage. Pessimism called it fate—stern mother of the unsavory. Optimism called it Providence. At all events, the train jammed shut like a closing telescope. Undiluted Hades was very prevalent for over an hour. There were groans, screams, prayers—all the jargon of those about to precipitately return from whence they came. It ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... influence, showing him how easily he might secure for himself the supreme power, and, as he hesitated, again threatened to leave him. Kassa resisted no longer; he advanced into Godjam, and carried all before him. The battle of Djisella, fought in 1853, decided the fate of Ras Ali. His army had been but for a short time engaged when, panic-stricken, the Ras left the field with a body of 500 horse, leaving the rest of his large host to swell the ranks of the conqueror. Victory followed victory, and after a few years, from Shoa to Metemma, from Godjam to Bogos, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... disposal. To comfort him I wrote the names and addresses of my nearest relations on a leaf torn out of my pocket-book, and gave him the latter. He was absolutely certain that the prospectors had met their doom under the Swazi spears, and that a like fate would be mine. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... give me the usual testimonies of your friendship; you cannot do me a greater favour than to inform me of the destiny of my dear Schemselnihar, when you hear any news of it. The uncertainty I am in concerning her fate, and the apprehensions which her fainting occasioned me, keep me in this languishing condition you reproach me with. My lord, answered Ebn Thaher, you have reason to hope that her fainting was not attended with any serious ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations. It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and could see the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... business, and had the good sense to arrange an eclipse when a Royal Visitor wished for one, and so escape decapitation—a course which the kindly Shah evidently wished to indicate to the new and young Astronomer Royal as that which he should pursue in order to avoid the fate of his unhappy and obstinate predecessor. The attitude of the Shah towards science is one which is not altogether unknown ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... harsh and reckless; and now she was not sweet any longer, but just a wisp of an old woman, and nobody would ever bother about her again; and life gives one no second chances. Yaverland lamented, as Ellen had done, the fate of those exceptional people who are old or not ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... man to deal with, but I rather like you," said the Ambassador, holding out his hand. "I regret that Fate makes us enemies, and if at the last moment I can save you from being entirely ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... you; I find you with a singularly scared and troubled manner pretending to make inquiry respecting her, your real object evidently being to ascertain whether the fact of the murder were yet known, and to give rise to the impression that you knew nothing of the poor woman's fate. Then, when confronted with the corpse you are seen to be absolutely overcome by your emotion. Now, as I have simply stated the facts, do you imagine that a moment's doubt will be felt as to who has ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... the bearded grain an' th' Hessian fly, with nawthin' but his own thoughts an' a couple iv horses to commune with. An' so he goes an' he's happy th' livelong day if ye don't get in ear-shot iv him. In winter he is employed keepin' th' cattle fr'm sufferin' his own fate an' writin' testymonyals iv dyspepsia cures. 'Tis sthrange I niver heerd a farmer whistle ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... return—and his career destroyed by this unscrupulous scoundrel, Vasilovich; and justice cries aloud for the punishment of such wickedness; therefore Vasilovich must be punished. Moreover, the mysterious fate which I have in store for him may possibly exercise a salutary influence upon such of his fellow scoundrels as happen to be aware of the wrong that he has wrought upon poor Sziszkinski; for I will make it a part of my business to leave behind me a statement to the effect that Count Vasilovich ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... and equally robust subjects are forced to abandon the habit because of tremors, vertigo or a peculiar form of dyspepsia. We have known men who died from the use of tobacco, and others who met a like fate from whisky, who were never fully in the state denominated drunk. Men may earn a hobnail liver and dropsy by the constant, steady use of alcoholic drink taken systematically, so as always to keep within the limits of intoxication; ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... a martyr, takes no fine airs about what he has done and suffered, and shrinks uncomplainingly into our Shelters and our Factories, only asking as a benediction from heaven that someone will give him an honest job of work to do. That is the fate of Tommy Atkins. If in our churches and chapels as much as one single individual were to bear and dare, for the benefit of his kind and the salvation of men, what a hundred thousand Tommy Atkins' bear uncomplainingly, taking ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... length, "it may be all right. Possibly I am letting the thing prey on my mind too much. I may be wrong in supposing it the fate that is worse than death. But I'll tell you this much: the prospect of that prize-giving on the thirty-first of this month has been turning my existence into a nightmare. I haven't been able to sleep or think or eat ... By the way, that reminds me. You never explained that ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... judge were greater than those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses. Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and more human instincts were dominated even at that moment by his lawless passion for the Indian agent's wife, and his indecision as to the fate of his captive was as much due to this preoccupation as to a selfish consideration of her relations to the result. He hated the prisoner for his infelicitous and untimely crime, yet he could not make up his mind to his death. He paced the ground ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... always hoping for better times, wished for at least something on account. All his other customers had deserted him, and if they drank at all, chose some place where the wine was thin and cheap. The landlord held out bravely for three months after Roland was elected president, then, bemoaning his fate, informed the guild that he would be compelled ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... niver wear shoes, aither. Well, I got off me horse and stharted to follow the thrack, and whin I got to that bunch of brush the dhurty rid divils sprang out on me like a pair of hounds, tied me hands and fate, and was tryin' to burn me aloive ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... fate, however, to cross, during the course of his explorations, a far greater extent of country than any Australian traveller had ever done previously, and as a very large portion of this had never before been trodden by the foot of civilized man, and from its nature is never likely to be so invaded ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... circumambulations, were too convincing evidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering, and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me—whether I should ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... The fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early and strong hold upon De Quincey's mind; one of the Suspiria was to have enlarged upon this theme. Strictly speaking, the Pariahs is that one of the lower castes of Hindoo society ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... drifted no man knew. The sun had not been visible for a week, nor the stars, and the captain had been unable to take observations in order to determine his position. At any moment a cruiser might swoop down and hale the crew away to Siberia. The fate of other poaching seal-hunters was too well known to the men of the Mary Thomas, and there ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London



Words linked to "Fate" :   ill luck, good luck, lot, causal agency, cause, natural event, circumstances, predestination, occult, law of common fate, day of reckoning, bad luck, luck, causal agent, line of fate, doom, doomsday, destine, supernatural, luckiness, end of the world, tough luck, portion, providence, occurrent, kismet, kismat, good fortune, occurrence, destiny, designate, fortune, ordain, happening, inevitable, karma



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