Decreed Quotes & Sayings

It was nearly winter. I had just seen a friend die, and was again beginning to take pleasure in my own existence. This friend, who thought of himself as the "first man to experience pain", had nevertheless tried up to the last moment to wish death away. I was thankful for all things and decreed: Enjoy yourself, take advantage of your days of good health. — Peter Handke

You must convince your heart that whatever Allah has decreed is most appropriate and most beneficial for you. — Al-Ghazali

God decreed that the love which came to Cosette was a love that saves. — Victor Hugo

A tub was brought in to melt snow for mortar. They heard somebody saying it was twelve o'clock already.
"It's sure to be twelve," Shukhov announced. "The sun's over the top already."
"If it is," the captain retorted, "it's one o'clock, not twelve."
"How do you make that out?" Shukhov asked in surprise. "The old folk say the sun is highest at dinnertime."
"Maybe it was in their day!" the captain snapped back. "Since then it's been decreed that the sun is highest at one o'clock."
"Who decreed that?"
"The Soviet government."
The captain took off with the handbarrow, but Shukhov wasn't going to argue anyway. As if the sun would obey their decrees! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure. — Augustus

But I think there is an even bigger reason why God hates sin so much." William's eyes were wide as they studied his father's face. "It's because sin cost Him the life of His Son, Jesus. God decreed that those who sin roust die. Man sinned - but God still loved him. God didn't want man to die for his sin, so God provided a substitute. If man accepted the fact that another had died in his place, and was truly sorry for his sin, then he wouldn't have to die. — Janette Oke

There's a difference, in other words, between God's values that please Him (moral will) and those events that He causes to happen (decreed will).15 — Francis Chan

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect ... Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I had no money to start,
For Jack decreed in his pride:
The Caveman's wife didn't work -
It was his job to provide.

A brief reminder right here:
Let men believe they are shrewd,
But even women of old
Embroidered mittens for food. — Joyce Rachelle

Failure feelings - fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence - do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate which means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind. — Maxwell Maltz

There had been a time, until 1422, when a number of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish students attended Oxford and Cambridge in England. But fellow students had complained that Irish living together in large numbers sooner or later got noisy and violent and there was no handling them. Accordingly, the universities imposed a quota system on Irishman, and decreed that those admitted must be scattered around among non-compatriots: exclusively Irish halls of residence were banned. — Emily Hahn

It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption. — E.L. Doctorow

I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed must be; and be this so. — William Shakespeare

English law in 1572 decreed that beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offense, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. — Karl Marx

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed. — John Keats

He does. All that He has decreed He performs. "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psa. 115:3); and why has He? Because "there is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD" (Pro 21:30). — Arthur W. Pink

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant's bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness. — Saint John Chrysostom

It seems that Fate has decreed that I live through my entire daydream in reality! — Diana Wynne Jones

There is no erratic power or action or motion in creatures but they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by Him. — John Calvin

Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. 317 What is decreed must be, and be this so. 318 — William Shakespeare

While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a 'right' to a telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of 'universal service' - the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available, even in the most remote regions of the country. — Vint Cerf

Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation ... to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly. — Samuel Johnson

Lucius paused, turning on his heel to face me. "I grow weary of your ignorance." He moved closer to me, leaning down and peering into my eyes. "Because your parents refuse to inform you, I will deliver the news myself,and I shall make this simple for you." He pointed to his chest and announced, as though talking to a child, "I am a vampire." He pointed to my chest. "You are a vampire. And we are to be married, the moment you come of age. This has been decreed since our births."
I couldn't even process the "getting married" part, or the thing about "decreed." He'd lost me at "vampire."
Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn.
So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain. — Beth Fantaskey

Ham will continue to be servant of servants, as the Lord decreed, until the curse is removed. will the present struggle free the slave? No; but they are now wasting away the black race by thousands ... Treat the slaves kindly and let them live, for Ham must be the servant of servants until the curse is removed. Can you destroy the decrees of the Almighty? You cannot. Yet our Christian brethren think that they are going to overthrow the sentence of the Almighty upon the seed of Ham. They cannot do that, though they may kill them by thousands and tens of thousands. — Brigham Young

The people have the power to redeem the work of fools. Upon the meek the graces shower, it's decreed the people rule. — Patti Smith

It is hereby decreed that the wall separating the sacred and the profane be toen down. From now on everything is sacred. — Paulo Coelho

Confessions of an Anglo-Welshman For my own country's part Her lore and language I should have by heart. 'Twas she who raised me, Built me bone by bone Out of the teeming earth, the dreaming stone. Even at my christening it was she decreed Uprooted I should bleed. And yet for another's sake No wound deletes, No patriotism dulls The true and the beautiful Bequeathed to me by Blake, Shelley and Shakespeare and the ravished Keats. 1943 — R.S. Thomas

Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders. — Herman Melville

God foreknows what will be because He has decreed what shall be. It is therefore a reversing of the order of Scripture, a putting of the cart before the horse, to affirm that God elects because He foreknows people. The truth is, He foreknows because He has elected. This removes the ground or cause of election from outside the creature, and places it in God's own sovereign will. God purposed in Himself to elect a certain people, not because of anything good in them or from them, either actual or foreseen, but solely out of His own mere pleasure. As — Arthur W. Pink

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, and their responsibilities have been decreed by our species ... the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. — John Steinbeck

Prisoners of war from many lands came together that morning at such and such a place in Dresden. It had been decreed that here was where the digging for bodies was to begin. So the digging began. — Kurt Vonnegut

The Duke has decreed that the Castle is not cold." The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold. "And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things."
... some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also full of holes. Perhaps the Duke has decreed that there are no moths, either. — Christopher Peter Grey

Then he offers me his arm. As I take it, I wonder what folly decreed that women cannot walk unassisted. — R.L. LaFevers

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962 — John Steinbeck

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously ... — Arthur Conan Doyle

Why was it not good for man to be alone? If it were only man's loneliness with which God was concerned, he might have provided other companionship. But he provided woman, for she was to be man's helpmeet. She was to act in partnership with him. . . . The Lord God gave woman a different personality and temperament than man. . . .

In the world today there are observed strenuous efforts to distort and desecrate this divine pattern. . . . The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men. We say, we would not have you descend to that level. More often than not the demand for equality means the destruction of the inspired arrangement that God has decreed for man, woman, and the family. Equality should not be confused with equivalence. — Ezra Taft Benson

It would seem, O Nushain, that you have doubted your own horoscope,' said the guide, with a certain irony. 'However, even a bad astrologer, on occasion, may read the heavens aright. Obey, then, the stars that decreed your journey. — Clark Ashton Smith

If every life is a payment for a previous life, one also wonders why Buddha was so reluctant to allow women into the sacred order and decreed that the rules for governing them be far greater. In fact, even a woman who had been in the order for years owed greater reverence to a man who was just an initiate. If kamma is in operation, why were these rules superimposed, assuming a virtue of higher order placed upon some? Unless of course, a woman, by virtue of being a woman, inherited a greater kamma. What — Ravi Zacharias

It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples. (7th February 1945) — Adolf Hitler

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad. — Baruch Spinoza

If that made him heavy company sometimes, so be it. Who decreed that life was to be one long rowdy masquerade (punctuated with those little pets of melancholy indulged by a crowd who made a religion of their feelings)? — Howard Jacobson

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man's will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so. — A.W. Tozer

Lavina led me to an abandoned warehouse. I think that at some point someone decreed that all clandestine meetings must be held in one. Woe to the criminal overlord who lives in a city thriving with commerce, with no empty warehouses to be found. He probably needs to build one, just to have a place to arrange late-night meetings. (Bewitched) — Kelley Armstrong

There is nothing which Nature so clearly reveals, and upon which science so strongly insists, as the universal reign of law, absolute, universal, invariable law ... Not one jot or tittle of the laws of Nature are unfulfilled. I do not believe it is possible to state this fact too strongly ... Everything happens according to law, and, since law is the expression of Divine will, everything happens according to Divine will, i.e. is in some sense ordained, decreed. — Joseph LeConte

Everything's explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time, and there's no way of even imagining how anything could have been different from what it is. — Paul Bowles

Science seems to have uncovered a set of laws that, within the limits set by the uncertainty principle, tell us how the universe will develop with time, if we know its state at any one time. These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it. — Stephen Hawking

To feed on death is to become food for death. To live by other's pain is to become a prey for pain. So has decreed the omni-will. Know that and choose your course ! — Mikhail Naimy

Everyone in my orbit would have a terrible day: the arbiter of days has decreed it. — John Darnielle

It was the Almighty who decreed that men and women must cover their nakedness by wearing proper and modest clothing. No amount of rationalizing can change God's laws. No amount of fashion designing can turn immodesty into virtue, and no amount of popularity can change sin into righteousness. — Mark E. Petersen

Quite amazing how determined kings and emperors have been to destroy books. But civilization is built on such desecrations, is it not? Justinian the Great burned all of the Greek scrolls in Constantinople after he codified the Roman law and drove the Ostrogoths from Italy. And Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, the man who unified the five kingdoms and built the Great Wall, decreed that every book written before he was born should be destroyed. — Ross King

Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies forcibly dragged Catholics into Protestant churches. Priests in the American West sometimes chained Indians to church pews to enforce church attendance. After many such episodes in Christendom it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Much of the current hostility against Christians evokes the memory of such examples. The blending of church and state may work for a time but it inevitably provokes a backlash, such as that seen in secular Europe today. — Philip Yancey

Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: 'Quick! Quick! Quick!' And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed. — Guy De Maupassant

... as though it had known to the second when I was to enter, had waited there during that entire twelve miles behind that walking mule and watched me draw nearer and nearer and enter the door at last as it had know (ay, decreed, since there is that justice whose Moloch's palate-paunch makes no distinction between gristle bone and tender flesh) that I would enter - ... — William Faulkner

As members of my cabinet," Alyss calmly explained, "you share in the responsibilty of ensuring a safe furture for Wonderland. I'm sure the four of you will agree that we're in a crisis and that trying times bring out the best in you. What queen wouldn't want such helpful cabinet members by her side in an hour of need? Forgive me for calling you here. I was thinking only of myself and others when I did it. But for the love of your rank if nothing else, advise me. How do you think we should conter this invasion?"
Uh," said the Lady of Clubes.
I know exactly how we should counter it! said her husband. "First and foremost, a decree must be at once ... decreed! All ranking families are to remain indoors and well-protected until it can be guaranteed that every threat is violence is past! It's imperative that nothing inconvenient happen to us, for the population would then have no one to look up to! — Frank Beddor

Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod's death. — Richard Dawkins

Last night I suffered so much that there was nothing but my pain to distract me from my pain. I had to make it my sole diversion and with good reason. It had thus decreed. It attacked at every point. Then it distributed its troops. It encamped. It so manoeuvred that it was no longer intolerable at any one of its positions, but tolerable at them all. That is to say that the intolerable being distributed, it was this no longer, except as a whole. It was something both tolerable and intolerable. The organ that breaks down and the final chord that goes on for ever. — Jean Cocteau

As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. — F Scott Fitzgerald

GDCC M. Wolf has a dehumanized approach to demand. Demand is not an animal. Manipulating it veers on totalitarianism. The natural order is that people demand - or, more precisely, desire - the product of their work. This natural - and beautiful - order can momentously be tampered with by well-meaning or not so well-meaning people. Needs can be decreed by tyrants, cravings can be artificially aroused by advertising gurus and affordability can be engineered by economists through debt. But the end result is alienation. Serf8973521 — Cathal Haughian

JOHNNY: Friends! Outcasts. Leeches. Undesirables. A blessing on you, and upon this beggars' banquet. This day we draw a line in the chalk, and push back against the bastard pitiless busybody council, and drive them from this place for ever. I, Rooster Byron, your merciless ruler, have decreed that today all my bounty is bestowed upon you, gratis. There will be free booze, bangers, draw, whizz and whatnot, for all the minions of my kingdom. — Jez Butterworth

From time immemorial History has decreed that territory on this Planet Earth belongs to those powerful enough to take it and determined enough to keep it. — Ben Klassen

Not worth it," Cheryl decreed, "been there, done that, got the fuckin' t-shirt and it didn't fit so I threw the motherfucker out. — Kristen Ashley

Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures. — Aldous Huxley

No matter what street law decreed, this night smelled like violence. Go on, give those guns — Leigh Bardugo

Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor. — Desiderius Erasmus

20 She said: How can I have a son and no mortal has yet touched me, nor have I been unchaste? 21 He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord says: It is easy to Me; and that We may make him a sign to men and a mercy from Us.a And it is a matter decreed.b 21a. Jesus was a sign to men, in the sense that he was made a prophet, and every prophet is a sign, because the Divine revelation which is granted to him affords a clear proof of the existence of the Divine Being. Or, he was a sign to the Israelites in particular, because with him prophethood came to an end among the Israelites. 21b. She conceived him in the ordinary way in which women conceive children; see 3:44a. 22 Then she conceived him; and withdrew with him to a remote place. 23 And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree.a She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!b 23a. This shows that Mary gave birth to Jesus while on a journey; — Anonymous

Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed. — John Calvin

Wright is an interesting study of a superstar architect having both right and wrong influence. "All Architecture, worthy the name," he decreed in 1910, "will, henceforward, more and more be organic."12 So inspired by Viollet-le-Duc and Louis Sullivan, he inspired countless others (including young me) toward an organic approach to architecture. At the same time, the very pomposity of his decrees helped inflame a fatal egotism in generations of architects, and his most famous buildings belie his organic ideal. They were so totally designed - down to the screwheads all being aligned horizontally to match his prairie line - that they cannot be changed. To live in one of his houses is to be the curator of a Frank Lloyd Wright museum; — Stewart Brand

Grover Cleveland declined to participate in character attacks on Blaine . When presented with papers which purported to be extremely damaging to Blaine, he grabbed them, tore them up, flung the shreds into the fire, and decreed, The other side can have a monopoly of all the dirt in this campaign. — Grover Cleveland

But evil fortune has decreed, (The foe of mice as well as men) The royal mouse at last should bleed, Should fall ne'er to arise again. — Michael Bruce

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new ... — Edmund Burke

The Code of the Vampires decreed that anyone who violated the Sacred Law was condemned to death, the blood burning. Charles had refused to subject Allegra to the sentence. But Mimi was a different matter. Mimi walked out of the church, knowing that if she ever saw Jack again, she would have to kill him. — Melissa De La Cruz

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother. — Erma Bombeck

Could not God originally have decreed that no one ever would be able to sin, thus — R.C. Sproul

God has decreed it so, that where tenderness of heart is, there mercy shall follow ... — Richard Sibbes

It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket. — Arthur Smith

Prohibitionism is based on the premise that citizens will refrain from behaviors that are deemed immoral or harmful if such behaviors are decreed unlawful and criminal, even though such behaviors do not harm or unreasonably endanger others without their informed consent. Prohibitionism stems from totalitarian paternalism, an ideology rather prevalent among governing elites around the world, based on the presumption that people are feeble, foolish and irresponsible, needing constant protection from themselves. — Jeffrey Dhywood

they not that Allaah, Who created the heavens and the earth, is Able to create the like of them. And He has decreed for them an appointed term, whereof there is not doubt. But the Zaalimoon (polytheists and wrong-doers, etc.) refuse (the truth the Message of Islaamic Monotheism, and — Muhammad Muhsin Khan

God decreed to save and damn certain particular persons. This decree has its foundation in the foreknowledge of God, by which he knew from all eternity those individuals who would, through his preventing [going before] grace, believe, and, through his subsequent grace would persevere by which foreknowledge, he likewise knew those who would not believe and persevere. — Jacobus Arminius

Sassy," he said through a smile. Then decreed, "Old lady." "Damn straight," I returned. — Kristen Ashley

Mr. Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein night draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.
I was drunk, cried Suttree. — Cormac McCarthy

For architecture, among all the arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe, which the ancients called "kosmos," that is to say ornate, since it is like a great animal on whom there shine the perfection and the proportion of all its members. And praised be our Creator who, as the Scriptures say, has decreed all things in number, weight, and measure. — Umberto Eco

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God.
Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. — Jonathan Edwards

Indeed, with iAm out of the picture, she was prepared to be celibate. Who else would she want, anyway? She had met her match - it was even decreed in the stars.
That he didn't want her?
Well, one's fate was not another's, no matter the emotions involved - — J.R. Ward

More than ever before, we need to learn and apply the principles of economic self-reliance. We do not know when the crisis involving sickness or unemployment may affect our own circumstances. We do know that the Lord has decreed global calamities for the future and has warned and forewarned us to be prepared. For this reason the Brethren have repeatedly stressed a 'back to basics' program for temporal and spiritual welfare. — Ezra Taft Benson

Do I feel ancient to you now?" he murmered. "Too different from the person you loved before you knew this?"
Her eyes were already glowing green, and her full lips parted. "No, you don't feel too ancient." Her voice was husky. "Or too different. You feel like mine. Whoever you were, whoever you are ... you're mine."
Mencheres smiled, his fangs stretching to their full length. "So you have spoken, so it shall be decreed. For all eternity. — Jeaniene Frost

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what "decreed" means. — Hans Kung

Don't misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I'm talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what's going on. — N. T. Wright

Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. — Stephen Hawking

It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina.
"Gently, my lady. It is a greater than thou that sets the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps He may give me a palace one day. But the Father has decreed for His children that they shall know the thing that is neither their ideal nor His. All in His time, my lady. He has much to teach us. — George MacDonald

The Framers [of the Constitution] ... created the federally protected right of silence and decreed that the law could not be used to pry open one's lips and make him a witness against himself. — William O. Douglas

Palace with massive pillars and many courtyards, and his word was law. All the people of Egypt had to toil for him if he so decreed. And sometimes he did. — E.H. Gombrich

It's disgraceful how these humans blame the gods. They say their tribulations come from us, when they themselves, through their own foolishness, bring hardships which are not decreed by Fate. — Homer

I have attempted to give you a glimpse ... of what there may be of soul in chemistry. But it may have been in vain. Perchance the chemist is already damned and the guardian of the pearly gates had decreed that of all the black arts, chemistry is the blackest. But if the chemist has lost his soul, he will not have lost his courage and as he descends into the inferno, sees the rows of glowing furnaces and sniffs the homey fumes of brimstone, he will call out:
Asmodeus, hand me a test tube. — G.N.Lewis

If utopia was illusion hypostasized, communism, going still further, will be illusion decreed, imposed: a challenge to the omnipresence of evil, an obligatory optimism. A man will find it hard to accommodate himself to it if he lives, by dint of ordeals and experiments, in the intoxication of disappointment and if, like the author of Genesis, he is reluctant to identify the Age of Gold with the future, with becoming. Not that he scorns the fanatics of "infinite progress" and their efforts to make justice prevail here on earth; but he knows, to his misery, that justice is a material impossibility, a grandiose meaninglessness, the only ideal about which we can declare quite certainly that it will never be realized, and against which nature and society seem to have mobilized all their laws. — Emil Cioran

If the emperor had capriciously decreed the death of the most eminent and virtuous citizen of the republic, the cruel order would have been executed without hesitation by the ministers of open violence or of specious injustice. The caution, the delay, the difficulty with which he proceeded in the condemnation and punishment of a popular bishop, discovered to the world that the privileges of the church had already revived a sense of order and freedom in the Roman government. — Edward Gibbon

Is not for kings, Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine or for rulers to desire beer. 5 Otherwise, they will drink, forget what is decreed, and pervert justice for all the oppressed. — Anonymous

Not only dowomen sufferindignities in daily life, but the literature of the world proclaims their inferiority and divinely decreed subjection in all history, sacred and profane, in science, philosophy, poetry, and song. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the abolition of history; he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books. — Manu Herbstein

a God-centered view of truth demands that we affirm that all truth is God's truth. That which is true is true because God said it, created it, or decreed it. — Keith A. Mathison