Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.

-Ford,John
  ' Tis Pity She's a Whore, act 5, sc.4.

To each his suff'rings, all are men, Condemned alike to groan; The tender for another's pain, Th'unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

-Gray,Thomas
  Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (published1747), l.91^100.

Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how faröbut far above the great.

-Gray,Thomas
  The Progress of Poesy, l.122^3.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

-Henley,W(illiam) E(rnest)
  'Invictus', collected in In Hospital (1903).

It has beenour fateas a nation notto have ideologies but to be one.

-Hofstadter, Richard
Quoted in the NewYork Times, 2  Jul1989.

Fate tried to conceal him by calling him Smith.

-Holmes, Oliver Wendell
  Of Samuel Francis Smith.'The Boys'.

What is a modern poet's fate? To write his thoughts upon a slate; The critic spits on what is done, Gives it a wipeöand all isgone.

-Honorius of Autun
'A  Joke'. Collected in Hallam Tennyson  Alfred Lord Tennyson (1897), vol.2, ch.3.

  It isthe customary fate of new truthsto begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
  Science and Culture and Other Essays,'The Coming of  Age of the Origin of the Species'.

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? Who blushes at the name? When cowards mock the patriot's fate, Who hangs his head for shame? He's all a knave or half a slave Who slights his country thus: But a true man, like you, man, Will fill your glass with us.

-Ingram,John Kells
  The Spirit of the Nation,'The Memory of the Dead'.

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilitiesitentailsisfighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

-James, Henry
  Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 4 Feb.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  The Vanity of Human Wishes, l.345^6.

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life†to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage or punished for neglect† Among these unhappy mortals isthe writer of dictionaries† Every other author mayaspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  A Dictionary of the English Language, preface.

For all we have and are, For all our children's fate, Stand up and take the war. The Hun is at the gate!

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  'For  All We Have and  Are'.

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.

-Koestler, Arthur
  'The Boredom of Fantasy', collected in The Trail of the Dinosaur (1955), pt.2.

Many men would take the death sentence without a whimper to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.

-Arabia
  The Mint, pt.1, ch.4.

We have been too comfortable and too indulgentömany, perhaps, too selfishöand the stern hand of fatehasscoured ustoan elevationwhere we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks we had forgotten, of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as men and women of thisgeneration last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.

-Lloyd George (of Dwyfor), David, 1st Earl
  Speech, London,19 Sep.

Thou, too, sail on,O Ship of State! Sail on,O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

-Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
  The Seaside and Fireside,'The Building of the Ship', l.377^81.

The fate of human civilization will depend on whether the rockets of the future carry the astronomer's telescope or a hydrogen bomb.

-Lovell, Sir (Alfred Charles) Bernard
  The Individual and the Universe.

I could never begin a poem: 'When I am dead' In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way.

-McGough, Roger
  'When I  Am Dead'.

It lies not in our power to love, or hate, For will in us is overruled by fate. When two are stripped, lo ere the course begin We wish that one should lose, the other win; And one especially do we affect Of two gold ingots, like in each respect. The reason no man knows, let it suffice, What we behold is censured by our eyes. Where both deliberate, the love is slight; Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

-Marlowe, Christopher
  Hero and Leander (published1598), pt.1, l.167^76.