Man Is Destined Quotes & Sayings

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man
a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit. — Henry David Thoreau

Jasmine believes in a prophecy that says she is destined to love a man named Josh Toby. Okay, fine. He could believe that. Hell, he had friends who believed carbohydrates were the work of the devil. True love made sense at least. — Diana Holquist

We could almost believe that we are destined by Providence to an unsettled position on the globe, so invariably is a love of change implanted in the young. It seems as if the eternal Lawgiver intended that, at a certain age, man should leave father, mother, and the dwelling of his infancy, to seek his fortunes over the wide world. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Will you not understand that no man should be tormented by the future? The man who has been told that he will have to endure torture fifty years from now is not disturbed thereby, unless he has leaped over the intervening years, and has projected himself into the trouble that is destined to arrive a generation later. In the same way, souls that enjoy being sick and that seize upon excuses for sorrow are saddened by events long past and effaced from the records. Past and future are both absent; we feel neither of them. But there can be no pain except as the result of what you feel. — Seneca.

As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this. — Walter Dean Myers

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man. — Oswald Spengler

Yes, I've changed. I used to believe in everything that you do, maybe even more firmly. But then in Smyrna, Talib-effendi said to me: 'When you see a young man reaching for the sky, grab him by the leg and pull him back down to the ground.' And he pulled me back down to the ground. 'You are destined to live here,' he scolded me. 'So live here! And live as nicely as you can, but without shame. It is better that God ask you: why did you not do that? rather than: why did you do that?"'
"And what are you now?"
"A wanderer on wide roads where I meet good and bad people, who have the same worries and troubles as people do here, who have the same trivial joys as people do everywhere."
"What would happen if everyone took your path?"
"The world would be happier. Maybe. — Mesa Selimovic

Spiritual power is the eternal guide, in this life and the life after, for man ranks supreme among all creatures. Led forward by spiritual power, man can reach the summit destined for him by the Great Creator. — Haile Selassie

The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics. — Julian Huxley

The last of the lonely places is the sky, a trackless void where nothing lives or grows, and above it, space itself. Man may have been destined to walk upon ice or sand, or climb the mountains or take craft upon the sea. But surely he was never meant to fly? But he does, and finding out how to do it was his last great adventure. — Frederick Forsyth

Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality ... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. — Thomas Jefferson

Among the aimless, unsuccessful or worthless, you often hear talk about 'killing time.' The man who is always killing time is really killing his own chances in life. While the man who is destined to success is the man who makes time live by making it useful. — Arthur Brisbane

A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library ... witho ut cost to the reader. — Lawrence Clark Powell

What is the problem of women's freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity
housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man. — Crystal Eastman

There is an old Yiddish phrase I find apropos - but not by choice: "Man plans, God laughs." I am a prime example. My life was pretty much laid out for me. I was a basketball star my entire childhood, destined to be an NBA player for the Boston Celtics. But in my very first preseason game, Big Burt Wesson slammed into me and ruined my knee. I tried gamely to come back, but there is a big difference between gamely and effectively. My career was over before I hit the parquet floor. I — Harlan Coben

Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

America is not going to be destroyed " he shouted passionately.
"Never?" prodded the old man softly. "Well ... " Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. "Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so."
Nately squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, forever is a long time, I guess. — Joseph Heller

Listen: this story's one you ought to know,
You'll reap the consequence of what you sow.
This fleeting world is not the world where we
Are destined to abide eternally:
And for the sake of an unworthy throne
You let the devil claim you for his own.
I've few days left here, I've no heart for war,
I cannot strive and struggle any more,
But hear an old man's words: the heart that's freed
From gnawing passion and ambitious greed
Looks on kings' treasures and the dust as one;
The man who sells his brother, as you've done,
For this same worthless dust, will never be
Regarded as a child of purity.
The world has seen so many men like you,
And laid them low: there's nothing you can do
But turn to God; take thought then for the way
You travel, since it leads to Judgment Day — Abolqasem Ferdowsi

The highest ideal man can form of his own powers, is that which he is destined to attain. Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain. This is the law and the prophets. Knock and it shall be opened, seek and ye shall find. It is demonstrated; it is a maxim. — Margaret Fuller

The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him ... In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice. — Simone De Beauvoir

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst. — Philippa Gregory

As Hector walks to the balcony, he suddenly thought of his mother. He missed her dearly as he looked up, closed his eyes and felt Maria's warm breath behind his ears, whispering the same words of wisdom she never get tired of telling him over and over again, "You are born and destined to live in this place for a reason. I don't want to see you growing as a man who only thinks about and care for, is himself." And as tears start to fall, he whispered, "Yes, my dear mother. Now I undestand. — Juan Bautista

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.

Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. — Colson Whitehead

My most profound confidence is however based upon the fact that at the head of Germany there stands a man by his entire development, his desires, and striving can only have been destined by fate to lead our people into a brighter future. — Alfred Jodl

Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that don't. — Cormac McCarthy

To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half-rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality. — Hermann Hesse

Although the realization of values in a culture may seem on the surface to be concerned merely with the temporal and material, this is appearance only, for man is a spiritual being destined for eternity, exhaustively accountable to his Creator-Lord. — Henry R. Van Til

The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. - Oswald Chambers L — John Bevere

On one side it seems there is faith in a Creator-God - and at the same time, the rejection of his creation; and on the other side there is an affirmation of the world, yet a world that is horrible in its meaninglessness, for the one who alone has the possibility of using and enjoying this world - man- is in this world an accidental guest, destined for total annihilation. And so this horrible and frightening dilemma brings us to the one question that each of us must pose: in the final analysis, how do *I* personally relate to this inescapable, universal, and relentless question about death? — Alexander Schmemann

Every man waits his destined hour; even the cities are doomed to their fate. Let us spend our leisure with our books, which will take our minds off these troubles, and will teach us to despise what many people desire....sometimes I am free for reading, free from all care about public affairs...I live free as much as I can

-Freedom here has nothing to do with political libertyir a notion of rights or the licence to say whatever [Poggio] wished or the ability to go wherever [Poggio] chose. It is rather the experience of withdrawing inwardly from the press of the world - and ensphering himself in a space apart. — Poggio Bracciolini

It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat. — Loren Eiseley

The animal kingdom is destined by nature to serve, and that service is fulfilled in alleviating the temporal and physical needs of man; the animal spirit or soul is limited by time - it dies with the body. — Saint Bernard

For since men for the most part follow in the footsteps and imitate the actions of others, and yet are unable to adhere exactly to those paths which others have taken, or attain to the virtues of those whom they would resemble, the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour. Acting in this like the skilful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim much above the destined mark; not designing that his arrow should strike so high, but that flying high it may alight at the point intended. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan, the one that will provide your solution once the problem has been posited clearly, in its entirety, in its indispensable harmony. This plan has been drawn up well away from the frenzy in the mayor's office or the town hall, from the cries of the electorate or the laments of society's victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds. It has taken account of nothing but human truths. It has ignored all current regulations, all existing usages, and channels. It has not considered whether or not it could be carried out with the constitution now in force. It is a biological creation destined for human beings and capable of realization by modern techniques. — James C. Scott

Normally a man who looks to me for leadership in time of battle is destined to be disappointed, — Robert Brightwell

One of this surprised me; it was as if this meeting between us was foreordained by a force greater than either of us. I know I had the events wheeling swiftly over a well-traveled course to a destination long ago established. I felt as if I was merely saying the words I had been destined to say. If there was no surprise, neither was there fear or alarm. The circumstance seemed both right and natural
as if we had talked this way a thousand times, and knew well what the other would say ... This is the only truth we can know in life. Nothing else in the world is certain
only this: that a man and woman should come together in love. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Good oil, like good wine, is a gift from the gods. The grape and the olive are among the priceless benefactions of the soil, and were destined, each in its way, to promote the welfare of man. — George Ellwanger

It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part. — Norbert Wiener

Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain, this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on loan from ... God. Rush Limbaugh. A man. A legend. A way of life. — Rush Limbaugh

That is the way God sees us, you and me and everyone who has ever inched his way on this earth. He sees not our history but our destiny. Not what we once were but what we will one day become. He sees not our drizzly gray past but our sun-washed future, a rainbow full of promise arching over the whole of it. For God sees not as man sees. We see the disgusting sinner; He sees the destined saint. — Leif Hetland

If astronomy teaches anything, it teaches that man is but a detail in the evolution of the universe, and the resemblant though diverse details are inevitably to be expected in the hosts of orbs around him. He learns that, though he will probably never find his double anywhere, he is destined to discover any number of cousins scattered through space. — Percival Lowell

A coward: a man or woman who is unsatisfied by his condition and believes he was destined to accept it that way — Bangambiki Habyarimana

The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can say beforehand that his will is strong? There are all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one's will and one's inclinations. People talk as if the two things were essentially distinct; on different sides of one's organism, like the heart and the liver. I believe there is a certain group of circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to snap like a dry twig. — Henry James

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others. — Alexis De Tocqueville

There is a spirit of resistance implanted by the Deity in the breast of man, proportioned to the size of the wrongs he is destined to endure. — Charles James Fox

I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties. — Douglas Southall Freeman

Man's natural desire is to better oneself. But when does this admirable attribute become a wedge in the growing tree of progress, destined for irreversible and devastating consequences? We see such monstrous consequences come to fruition over and over throughout history. When fire is not contained, the whole land will burn. — Johan Twiss

Every governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention. — Henry James

If we are to become the masters of science, not its slaves, we must learn to use its immense power to good purpose. The machine itself has neither mind nor soul nor moral sense. Only man has been endowed with these godlike attributes. Every age has its destined duty. Ours is to nurture an awareness of those divine attributes and a sense of responsibility in giving them expression. — David Sarnoff

It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State
ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios
burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man ... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control. — Lord Acton

If there is any intelligence guiding this universe, philosophy wishes to know and understand it and reverently work with it; if there is none, philosophy wishes to know that also, and face it without fear. If the stars are but transient coagulations of haphazard nebulae, if life is a colloidal accident, impersonally permanent and individually fleeting, if man is only a compound of chemicals, destined to disintegrate and utterly disappear, if the creative ecstasy of art, and the gentle wisdom of the sage, and the willing martyrdom of saints are but bright incidents in the protoplasmic pullulation of the earth, and death is the answer to every problem and the destiny of every soul
then philosophy will face that too, and try to find within that narrowed circle some significance and nobility for man. — Will Durant

Every man is destined to win. Whether he wins or not is determined by whether or not he aligns himself with God's will. — Artur Pawlowski

The idea that the bumps or depressions on a man's head indicate the presence or absence of certain moral characteristics in his mental equipment is one of the absurdities developed from studies in this field that has long since been discarded by science. The ideas of the phrenologist Gall, however ridiculous they may now seem in the light of a century's progress, were nevertheless destined to become metamorphosed into the modern principles of cerebral localization. — Edward Anthony Spitzka

you have too good a mind to throw away. I don't quite know what we're doing on this insignificant cinder spinning aay in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fibre of my being. A man must live by his light and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.'
She is right. I will say yes. I will say yes even though I do not really know what she is talking about. — Walker Percy

God saved us to make us holy, not happy. Some experiences may not contribute to our happiness, but all can be made to contribute to our holiness. Vance Havner
The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. God's one aim is the production of saints. — Oswald Chambers

I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God. — Adolf Hitler

In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man. — Walker Percy

To be artist, and lover, that is the true goal, the only adequate objective, the divinely destined end for man. — Bernard Iddings Bell

My unlucky star had destined me to be born when there was much talk about morality and, at the same time, more murders than in any other period. There is, undoubtedly, some connection between these phenomena. I sometime ask myself whether the connection was a priori, since these babblers are cannibals from the start - or a connection a posteriori, since they inflate themselves with their moralizing to a height which becomes dangerous for others.
However that may be, I was always happy to meet a person who owed his touch of common sense and good manners to his parents and who didn't need big principles. I do not claim more for myself, and I am a man who for an entire lifetime has been moralized at to the right and the left - by teachers and superiors, by policemen and journalists, by Jews and Gentiles, by inhabitants of the Alps, of islands, and the plains, by cut-throats and aristocrats - all of whom looked as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. — Ernst Junger

Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they've always one foot on the ground andthe other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals. — Francois Rabelais

Man must be in space - that is what we are destined for. There is nothing else that we can do. — Majel Barrett

When a man meets the woman with whom he is destined to share his life, he knows. — P.O. Dixon