"Fatalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so used to the firing and so weary that they become oblivious of everything even when shells are falling within a dozen yards of them. They stay in the trenches five days and then get five days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism—they have been lucky so far and will come through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it cold, the deserted room, he made himself busy and laid the fire and set the two chairs hospitably by the hearth. He did not light the fire. It must be ready for her if she came. After it was in order (her house, it seemed to him now, with a fatalism of belief he accepted and did not dwell upon) he sat down by the cold hearth and tried to think. But never of himself. He thought of her: beautiful, lustrous, caged bird with the door of her prison open, and who yet would not ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a singular illustration of fatalism, such certainly as we might expect in a Stoic, but carried even to a Turkish excess; and not theoretically professed only, but practically acted upon in a case of capital hazard. That no prince ever killed his own successor, i.e., that it was vain for a prince to put conspirators ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... are looked upon with such curiosity by the rest of the world. The curse had entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing else in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless fatalism. It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating assertion of purity and holiness. The Government of Holy Russia, arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the bodies of its subjects like a God-sent ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... The housewife and mother were made to look to the dealer, and thus to feel their helplessness. This sense of ignorance, this subconscious loss of power over things, only increased the effect of that fatalism which the control of machinery was leading man out ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... OEdipus has been derived from the doctrine of fatalism, inculcated by the story. There is something of cant in talking much upon the influence of a theatre on public morals; yet, I fear, though the most moral plays are incapable of doing much good, the turn of others may make a mischievous impression, by embodying in verse, and rendering ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and shame at the same time. She felt then that death had crouched behind her and was standing so close that it sent a shudder of frenzy through her entire being and cast her into an apathetic indifference. She ceased to think and surrendered herself passively, with the fatalism of people who have suffered long or who have been crushed by some overwhelming misfortune, to the wave that bore her on and did not even ask whither it ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... reason that the causes are perhaps many. Chief among these, probably, is the fact that our progress along industrial lines has occupied the entire time of the majority of our best intellects, and it is also in no small degree the consequence of a fatalism that regards disease as a direct visitation of providence and therefore a thing which man may not avoid. Another cause in some instances is the pride of our people in their homes and respective localities, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... a decision as this, had she heard it, Edith, too religious to acknowledge any thing tending towards fatalism, would not for a moment have agreed; yet it embodied a truth destined to cause her deepest sorrow, and which was gradually forcing itself upon her. Already, although they had been married so few weeks, even ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... interesting in a historical point of view, is the character of Jasper Dryfesdale the steward of the Douglas family, in 'The Abbot.' In this man Scott has happily combined the sentiment of absolute feudal devotion to his superiors with a gloomy fatalism learned 'among the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany.' If carefully studied, Dryfesdale will be found to be, on the whole, the most morally instructive character in the entire range of Scott's writings. In the first place, he illustrates the fact, so little noted by the advocates of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... characteristics—appear to me calculated, unless supplemented by other influences, to check the growth of the qualities of initiative and self-reliance, especially amongst a people whose lack of education unfits them for resisting the influence of what may present itself to such minds as a kind of fatalism with resignation ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... up. Her fatalism—even in the women of the Sahara it lurks—was awake. In that moment she was ready to die, to silence the bitter laughter of her rivals. It sank away as Sadok grasped the scorpions in his filthy claw, and leaped, gibbering in his beard, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous striving ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... The Tomb of Mano Tomb of Sayid On the Death of His Mistress On Avarice The Battle of Sabla Verses to My Enemies On His Friends On Temper The Song of Maisuna To My Father On Fatalism To the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid Lines to Harun and Yahia The Ruin of Barmecides To Taher Ben Hosien The Adieu To My Mistress To a Female Cup-bearer Mashdud on the Monks of Khabbet Rakeek to His Female Companions Dialogue by Rais To ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... deep. His facility of absorbing ideas is far greater than his power of valuating them. He generally accepts as real value any thing that bears the stamp of current opinion. His belief in the value and weight of number is without recall; his absolute trust in what Bryce calls "the fatalism of multitude" is beyond appeal. He lives and thrives ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... compares the fatalism of this concluding hemistich with the Christian tone of l. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... of abject fear; despair was knocking at his fine old heart; he was up to his knees in the loathsome brine already, and being so twisted up by his own exertions that to budge another inch was beyond him, he did what a horse is apt to do in such condition—he consoled himself with fatalism. He meant to expire; but before he did so he determined to make his mistress feel what she had done. Therefore, with a sad nudge of white old nose, he drew her attention to his last expression, sighed as plainly as a man could sigh, and fixed upon ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Turkish muleteers had decided to make a final bolt for it, and were using their whips on the Zeitoonli, who clung gamely to the reins. As soon as we got near enough to lend a hand the Turks resigned themselves with a kind of opportune fatalism. The Zeitoonli promptly turned the tables on them by laying hold of a leg of each and tipping them off into the mud. Ibrahim showed his teeth, and reached for a hidden weapon as he lay, but seemed to think ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... shortly afterwards professor at the Virginia Military Institute of Lexington. Here he was known as a rigid Presbyterian, and a "fatalist," if it be fatalism to believe that "what will ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... at Jose as she shuffles the cards. Then she sits half upon the table and cuts. A glance! a moment of sudden fear! she has cut death for herself! The blow has come to her in her most reckless moment. After an instant's pause she sings with a simple fatalism in ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... reckon things happen and you can't do 'em over again," observed the little seamstress, with the natural fatalism of the "poor white" ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... himself, especially in the "Mesnevi," to a rapprochement between Al-Islam and Christianity which both would reject (see supra, vol. vii. p. 135). The Calvinistic predestination as shown in the term "vessel of wrath," is but a feeble reflection of Moslem fatalism. On this subject I shall have more to say in a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the habitual fatalism of his nation, had resigned himself in advance to whatever might happen and drove straight onward with his eyes impassibly fixed upon the horses. Not so with Peppino; the wily and well-posted Italian was constantly on the alert, scanning ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... philosopher, are summed up in the formula, "Bear and forbear;" and he is said to have observed that "Man is but a pilot; observe the star, hold the rudder, and be not distracted on thy way." Both these schools of philosophy, however, passed into skepticism. Epicureanism became a material fatalism and a search for pleasure; while Stoicism ended in spiritual fatalism. But when the Gospel awakened the human heart to life, it was the Greek mind which gave mankind a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... responsibility which is attached to free-will rises before them, and they shrink from the idea of trusting their own welfare to their own short-sighted reason alone. Most men, at such times, take refuge in a sort of fatalism; they stand inactive, until urged in this or that direction by the press of outward circumstances; or they rush blindly forward, under impatience of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... cowardly feebleness brought the brood of fatalism. What was the right of so miserable a creature as she to excite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill? It would be quieter to float, kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will have to transport himself into a foreign clime, where the East and the West, the North and the South, blend in wonderful amalgamation. The suppleness of Asia and the energy of Europe, the passive fatalism of the Turk and the active religion of the Christian, the revengeful spirit of the oppressed, and the child-like resignation of him who cheerfully submits,—all these seeming contradictions find an expressive organ in Slavic popular poetry. Even in ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... my surroundings, yet discovered nowhere the slightest opening for escape. The vigilance of the guard, as well as the thorough manner in which I was bound, rendered any such attempt the merest madness. Realizing this, with the fatalism of a veteran I resigned myself in all patience ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the motif for all other decoration upon the walls and minor elements of the temple; it was the emblem of the trinity, deep, holy, significant of the mystery of the universe and the hereafter. There was something deeper than mere fatalism; behind all was the fact- rooted faith ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... love of prying analytically into the secret principles of things was counterbalanced by the desire to exhibit principles in practical combination, and by his preference of truth and virtue in its living portraiture to moral anatomizing or metaphysical dissection. He could grapple wisely with the fatalism of Malebranche and the pantheism of Spinosa, as his controversial works show; he could hold an even argument with the terrible Bossuet on the essence of Christianity. He preferred, however, to exhibit under forms far more winning than controversy, his views of human agency, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... nose, beard, and all, sat with his head sunken on his chest in mournful contemplation, and a fine-looking, black-haired, dragoon kind of youth with the wildest of eyes clung like grim death to a German helmet. The same expression of resigned fatalism was common ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the immigrants' only organised welcome into their new liberties. Occasionally some Church raises a thin protest. But the 'Anglo-Saxon' continues to take up his burden; and the floods from Europe pour in. Canadians regard this influx with that queer fatalism which men adopt under plutocracy. "How could they stop it? It pays the steamship and railway companies. It may, or may not, be good for Canada. Who knows? In any case, it will go ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... opposite exaggerations. There is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared Revolutions, that they teach a kind of historic fatalism, reducing almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another school, which is specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all history into biographies, into the action of a few great ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... With the kindly fatalism which is the distinctive note of the foregoing stanza, the sentiment of our next extract ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... burning, and this had no communication with either Galata or Pera. But the disaster was a great one. Over fifteen hundred houses had been burnt. The exact number was never known. First because nobody counted them—that would have been quite contrary to oriental indifference and fatalism—and then because it would have been excessively difficult to make them out, in the confused ash heap which had taken their place. The number of families reduced to destitution must have been very considerable, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... not the moral courage to show caution when warned that shots are coming, so they stand still and take their chance instead of seeking shelter; or possibly it might be more just to say that fatalism in some form arms them with a fortitude which cannot be shaken by shells. Soldiers on duty stick, as a matter of course, to their posts, or go straight on with work that has to be done whatever the dangers may be; but just now I am not thinking so much of them as of civilians and troops in their ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... Tournefort, speaking of the fatalism of the Turks, says that they always and everywhere leave the world as they found it. According to their own proverb, no grass grows again where ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... in the early part of the century, people generally gave in. The stronger tide was called Providence. Perhaps there was a small degree of fatalism in it. So Mrs. Leverett acquiesced, and recalled the fact that she had promised Electa that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental doctrine of fatalism,—you must, but can't, you ought, but ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... living organism is said to carry in itself the germ of its own decay, and perhaps a civilisation is no sooner alive than it begins to contrive its end. Gradually the symptoms of disease become apparent to acute physicians who state the effect without perceiving the cause. Be it so; circular fatalism is as cheerful as it is sad. If ill must follow good, good must follow ill. In any case, I have said enough to show that if Europe be again at the head of a pass, if we are about to take the first step ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... hours travelling between those prodigious masses of sand. Sand was below our feet, sand in front and behind, sand on each side. A sudden blast would inevitably cover us with it for many feet. It was nervous work. Fatalism alone could have induced men, fully alive to the danger they were incurring, to venture into such a position. To add to our danger, the loaded camels frequently fell down, and we were compelled to take off their burdens to enable them ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... Justice Holmes presented a dissenting opinion for himself and Justice Brandeis which contains a curious note of fatalism. He said: "If what I think the correct test is applied, it is manifest that there was no present danger of an attempt to overthrow the government by force on the part of the admittedly small minority ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Islam means surrender to the will of God, and the Mussulman a surrendered person; and certainly there have been those in the great religion of the East who held surrender in a higher sense than that of the fatalism which we generally attach to ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... predominant social conservatism held them aloof from all that was intellectually aggressive and theologically rationalistic. They had outgrown Tritheism, as it had been taught for generations in New England; they had refused to accept the fatalism that had been taught in the name of Calvin, and they had rejected the ecclesiastical tyrannies that had been imposed on men by the New England theology. But they had advanced only a little way in accepting modern ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... possible from the clear-headed tenacity of purpose that the experience of the next few months was to develop. It is hard to evoke, without seeming to exaggerate it, that the mood of early August: the assurance, the balance, the kind of smiling fatalism with which Paris moved to her task. It is not impossible that the beauty of the season and the silence of the city may have helped to produce this mood. War, the shrieking fury, had announced herself by a great wave ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... that this century, so fertile in religious sects and disputes, could escape the controversy concerning fatalism and free will, which, being strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such inextricable doubt and perplexity. The first reformers in England, as in other European countries, had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... everlasting talk, funeral ceremonies, and marriages. This flow of animal spirits must be one reason why they are such an indestructible race. The habitual influence on their minds of the agency of unseen spirits may have a tendency in the same direction, by preserving the mental quietude of a kind of fatalism. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... events have unnerved me; and all I can now do is to make life an amusement, and look on while others play. After all, even the highest game of crowns and sceptres, what is it? Vide Napoleon's last twelve-month. It has completely upset my system of fatalism. I thought, if crushed, he would have fallen, when 'fractus illabitur orbis,' and not have been pared away to gradual insignificance; that all this was not a mere jeu of the gods, but a prelude to greater changes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... strike out. His valise was attached in a precarious manner to the rear of the carry-all. "Well, I'll chance it," the driver remarked sadly, when Ransom protested against its insecure position. He recognised the southern quality of that picturesque fatalism—judged that Miss Chancellor and Verena Tarrant must be pretty thoroughly relaxed if they had given themselves up to the genius of the place. This was what he hoped for and counted on, as he took his way, the sole pedestrian in the group that had quitted the train, in the wake of the overladen carry-all. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... brother made no rejoinder. Ossaroo, however, gave vent to his thoughts by an ambiguous shake of the head, and a brief speech characteristic of that belief in fatalism peculiar ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... reared in the jungle by wild beasts and among wild beasts, or you would possess, as I do, the fatalism of the jungle." ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I avoided the subject of the impending marriage as much as possible. She looked forward with dull fatalism to the day when another woman would take the master into her keeping and her own occupation would ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke |
