"Fatalist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... variations of hope and despondency produced by the near approach to the object of his journey, and then finding it elude him, which had occurred twice in the last few weeks. Without knowing it, he was becoming a practical fatalist, inclined to do what seemed best at the moment, and let things slide, forming no plans for a future which was so very uncertain. Not a bad state of mind this for a hot country, where worry of ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... once. In every trivial event he saw the hand of the Almighty, but he saw too the corruption around him. It was for such as he that the light of the new faith shone with an alluring radiance, and soon there was no voice that spoke more loudly for the truth than that of Godefrey de la Mothe. A fatalist above all things, even now, when everything seemed lost, he did ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... was clear that they were both preoccupied and they soon fell silent. The Colonel indeed, was nervously sensible that fate was closing in about him, and that he might, at any moment, be betrayed into a false step. For, despite his practical, Yankee common-sense, the old soldier was something of a fatalist, and in the one most critical relation of his life, he had always felt himself subject to mysterious and ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... foresaw the new dangers which would beset him on every hand is clearly evidenced in the letters to his brother, but, heartened by the success which had at last crowned his efforts, he buckled on his armor ready to do battle to such foes, both within and without, as should in the future assail him. Fatalist as we must regard him, he believed in his star; or rather he went forward with sublime faith in that God who had thus far guarded him from evil, and in his own good time had given him the victory, and such a victory! For twelve years he had fought on ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... not a fatalist, and I therefore resolved not to rely upon mere destiny, but, if possible, to help it a little in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... of Murphy, something a psychologist might be able to describe in vague scientific terms. He became possessed of a desperate courage far greater than he had ever dreamed of having. In that moment of metamorphosis he became a fatalist. He realized that whether he gave "Slim" the information he sought or not the result would be the same. The life would be kicked and beaten out of him. The "Gink," to save himself and Gibson at all hazards, would not take a further chance by ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... an obliging fatalist. "The sequence of every one of those cards was determined when we ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... from without, reduced to direst straits of hunger within—the supreme rebel humor rose above nature; and men toiled and starved, fought their hopeless fight and died—not with the stoicism of the fatalist, but with the cheerfulness of duty well performed! And when Vicksburg fell, a curious proof of this was found; a manuscript bill-of-fare, surmounted by rough sketch of a mule's head crossed by a human hand holding a Bowie-knife. That ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... thing I remember was seeing the Sergeant, in his own fashion an extremely religious man, and not ashamed of it, kneeling upon the sand and apparently saying his prayers. As he explained afterwards, of course, as a fatalist, he knew well that whatever must happen would happen, but still he considered it right and proper to return thanks to the Power which had arranged that on this occasion the happenings should be good, and not ill, a sentiment with which every one of us agreed. Opposite to him, with one ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... often, but ever was he welcome, those nights the more glorious for his qualities of humour and generosity, his tales that stirred like the brassy cry of trumpets, his tolerance of the fool and his folly, his fatalist excuse for any sin except the scurviest. And there was the flageolet! You will hear the echo of it yet in that burgh town where he performed; its charm lingers in melodies hummed or piped by old folks of winter nights, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Sandals, Lockerbys, and Piersons became three possible sources of interest. While his thoughts were drifting in this direction, the squire's letter was received; and the young man, who was something of a fatalist, accepted it as ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... particles of my being twine in newer melodies, and from my one death arise a hundred lives. Why, through the thin partition of this consolation Pantheism can hear the groans of its neighbour, Pessimism. Better almost the black resignation which the fatalist draws from his own hopelessness, from the fierce kisses of misery ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... directions. Our latitude to-day was 80 degrees 52' N., which shows that there is a strong southerly drift upon the pack. Should the wind continue favourable it will break up as rapidly as it formed. At present we can do nothing but smoke and wait and hope for the best. I am rapidly becoming a fatalist. When dealing with such uncertain factors as wind and ice a man can be nothing else. Perhaps it was the wind and sand of the Arabian deserts which gave the minds of the original followers of Mahomet their ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good of beating up the dust On the world's highway, vexed with droughty heat? Oh, I grow fatalist—what must be must, Seeing that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... "Without being a fatalist to the point of nonresistance," said he, "I have always found that the highest wisdom lies in an acquiescence with the actual." He spoke slowly, and there was a vibration of feeling in his ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which betray the blood of this or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw; his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement of the eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper of three different generations, can tell pretty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... where we fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few aeons of eternal punishment more, and keep my private opinion ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... confessed, taking his key from the office. "It doesn't alter anything. I am fatalist enough to shrug my shoulders and move on. But I tell you, Sogrange," he added, after a moment's pause, "I wouldn't admit it to any one else in the world, but I am afraid of Bernadine. I have had the best of it so often. It can't last. In all we've had twelve ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard- headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist— I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... infinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world with impunity; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters we have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have given the fatalist a vantage ground of real truth which we ought to have considered and allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enter briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of life are our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what they say ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... letter cleared still further the issues of the conflict; or rather, it led to Kendal's making a fatalist compact with himself. He was weary of the struggle, and it seemed to him that he must somehow or other escape from the grip in which his life was held. He must somehow deaden this sense, this bitter sense of loss, if it were only by postponing ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... easy to account for the health of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence. Such healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at his side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist. And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyous meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not a constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... was not the case. I had not the slightest fear for my own safety: not that I was redeemed from the common lot by any superior courage, but simply that I had confidence in my resources. Though sufficiently reckless in my temperament, I have never been a fatalist. I have saved my life more than once by acts of volition—by presence of mind and adroitness. The knowledge of this has freed me from the superstitions of fore-ordination and fatalism; and therefore, when not too indolent, I take precautions ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... very slight value on life. I care little whether I die or continue in the world for some few added years. Lastly, the excitement of adventure has become a kind of necessity for me. I do not think that I could live in England for very long. Also I'm a fatalist. I believe that when my time comes I must go, that this hour is foreordained and that nothing I can do will either hasten or postpone it by one moment. Your circumstances are different. You are quite young. If you stay here and approach your father in a proper ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... a fatalist, Unorna," observed her companion, still stroking and twisting his beard. "It is strange that we should differ upon so many fundamental questions, you and I, and yet be such good friends. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... with his hands upon his hips, and his head bent forward. "I am a fatalist," he replied, "and just now (if you insist on it) an experimentalist. Talking of which, by the by, who painted out the schooner's name?" he said, with mocking softness, "because, do you know? one thinks it should be done again. It can still be partly read; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could not say definitely whether they would or not, and even provided that they would, could I retrace my steps from the beginning, after failing to find my own people, and return to the far northern land of Galus? I doubted it. However, I was learning from Ajor, who was more or less of a fatalist, a philosophy which was as necessary in Caspak to peace of mind as is faith to the devout Christian ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rosy tongue-tip from red lips peep forth! Can viciousness cap that? Horrid's the word. Yet there she is. There is that Little Girl, Her goodness and her badness, side by side, Like bacon, streak o' fat and streak o' lean. Ah, Fatalist, she must ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... said to be, then, a fatalist, and so vented this command as if he believed "What must be, must be!" unlike the doubter who said: "No! what must be, won't be!" The Douglasites could not meet this change of base, and Trumbull became senator by the Lincolnites' coalition. Lincoln ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... comprehensible remark: but it cannot be called the blast of a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it. Here its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances. To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... itself to the Father who knows and does best, and that it meets his dispensations with obedience and his mysteries with faith. The apathy and hardihood to which I have alluded are very far from the trust and piety of a religious spirit. The fatalist acquiesces in the course of things because he cannot help it. He has reasoned to the conclusion that his murmuring and weeping will not alter matters and he has resolved to take things as they come. But here is no resignation to the will of God, but to the necessity ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... naked face, in which you see the brain always working, with an almost painful simplicity—just saved from being painful by a humorous sense of external things, which becomes also a kind of intellectual criticism. He is a fatalist, and he studies the workings of fate in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. His view of women is more French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man's point of view, and not, as with Meredith, man's ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... meal was done, we each of us fell deep into thought. What was Hans thinking of - that man of the far West, but who seemed ruled by the fatalist ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., perching beside the despondent Butch on the Senior Fence. "I am not a fatalist, old man, but it does seem that fate hasn't destined Thor to play football for old Bannister this season! Here, after he won the Ham game, and we expected him to waltz off with Ballard's scalp and the Championship, he has to tumble downstairs! Oh, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... not believe we will begin that," she said. "It's like a game and we could go on indefinitely mentioning names on the strength of finding a mutual acquaintance. No, I am something of a fatalist. I think I will let events take their course. If we are to meet again, why, we are. If not, why, all our poor efforts can not compass it. Ah, it is nine o'clock, on the very stroke! Good night." She smiled ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... him and causing him vaguely to wonder at their existence. He was neither elated nor depressed, but found himself confronting fancies he had not confronted before, and at times regarding the course of events with something of the feeling of a fatalist. There was a thing it seemed from which he could not escape, yet in his deepest being was aware that he would have preferred to avoid it. No man wishes to encounter unhappiness; he was conscious remotely that this preference for avoidance arose from a vaguely defined knowledge that ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spending too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense. Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far too much recklessness, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Brienne for the purpose of distributing the prizes at the great examination, and when you placed on my head the laurel- crown, which has since been followed by others, you said, 'May it bring you happiness!' It is commonly believed that I am a fatalist; it is therefore very natural that I should not have forgotten my first coronation, and that it is still fresh in my memory. It would afford me much pleasure to be of service to you; besides, you ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... the Son of God breathe no spirit of mere passive resignation. That is the spirit of the Oriental fatalist, not of the son conscious of his sonship, of his heirship. Even the Lord's Death was not the yielding to inexorable necessity, to the inevitable working of the laws of nature. It was, if anything in His Life was, the deliberate ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... news we debated whether it would not be well for us to follow their example and, trekking westwards, try to find a pass in the mountains. Upon this point there was a division of opinion among us. Marais, who was a fatalist, wished to go on, saying that the good Lord would protect us, as He had done in ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... he laid on the necessity of extracting from life all it had to offer, since there was nothing beyond mortal love, which was the life of life. The author of Ionica seems to bring the old Greek fatalist to modern England, and to conduct him to church upon a Sunday morning. But Mimnermus is impenitent. He confesses that the preacher is right when he says that all earthly pleasures are fugitive. He has always confessed as much at home under the olive tree; ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... and rarely approached their camps, but to oppress, to mock, or to destroy them. They now discovered, that all were not enemies, and kindness was felt more powerfully by contrast. It is said by Backhouse, that Robinson acted under a sense of religious duty; by Mann, that he was a fatalist or predestinarian: he was calumniated by the base and the envious: the ascendancy he acquired over the natives, the Christian philosopher can easily comprehend. The effect of "good will to men," is peace on earth. Moral courage, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... better let matters take their course, Adele," I answered. "Though not much of a fatalist, I believe that when a person's time is to come, it comes. It avails nothing to hurry—nothing to endeavour to retard it. I shall fare, I doubt not, as my friends before me, dear Adele; and, if I can consult as well for ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... makes me cry for sheer pleasure. But it is haunted by the fear of death and old age; it is afraid of love; it is sometimes cynical—none of which things are true of youth in Salop or Salonika. The young peasant is a fatalist to the core; but fatalists are not afraid of death. Youth is ephemeral and so is the young peasant. He is always happy when the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... lady, all I have left to be proud of is my word. I give it to you that I am going after pearls. It may sound crazy, but I can't help that. I am realizing a dream. I'm something of a fatalist—I've had to be. I've always reasoned that if I could make the dream come true—this dream of pearls—I'd have a chance to turn over a new leaf. I've had to commit acts at times that were against my nature, my instincts. I've ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... said I, interrupting; "I had grown to be very indifferent about my own fortunes. I had become half fatalist as to myself. It was on very different grounds, indeed, that I dared this danger. It was to tell you, for, if I mistake not, I am addressing General Massena, tidings of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple in exploiting and even flattering ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Ancient world did not inquire into the problem of evil. On p. 214 he will have it that the ordinary man rejects, "without hesitation," the interference of will with material causes. In other words, he asserts that the ordinary man is a fatalist—for Froude knew very well that between the fatalist and the believer in a possibility of miracle there is no conceivable position. He will have it (on p. 216) that a modern doctor always regards ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... night, depended so largely upon the occurrence of helpful circumstances, any definite plan of action arranged beforehand became simply an impossibility. Still, striving to make allowances for the unexpected, I managed to put together a chain of details, trusting, with the blind faith of a fatalist, that these would somehow fall into line when the hour came. If they failed, as was likely, I determined to shift them about in any way possible as each fresh emergency arose. I realized how small a part any preliminary survey holds in such ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Abdul. If it has been so willed that I am to discover Akhnaton's treasure, even the spy of the cleverest woman on earth will not prevent it. I am fatalist enough for that, Abdul!" ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... chauffeur had started the car again, and was getting in by Lois's side. Doubtless he was a fatalist by profession. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thoughts was one master-feeling, that Providence had given me my chance and I must make the most of it. Perhaps the Calvinism of my father's preaching had unconsciously taken grip of my soul. At any rate I was a fatalist in creed, believing that what was willed would happen, and that man was but a puppet in the hands of his Maker. I looked on the last months as a clear course which had been mapped out for me. Not for nothing ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... answered. For to him that chance meeting came as a surprise and prompted him to a sudden approach he might not have ventured on maturer consideration; to her it seemed to carry on the experience of the day and, unguessed by Raymond, brought less amazement than he imagined. She was a fatalist—perhaps, had always been so, as her mother before her; yet she knew it not. They had passed and repassed many times during the vanished years; but since the moment that she had dismissed him with scorn and hoped her child would live to insult his grave, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... culprit let out of prison as she followed him down into the dining-room. For the moment she was no longer the fatalist, foreseeing inevitable exposure and punishment. Nothing had come of their meeting with Peterson—an incident which had taken her wholly by surprise, and which had threatened for an instant to result disastrously. She had spent wakeful hours ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... hardly seem possible to avoid becoming a fatalist? But who knows for certain whether he is convinced of anything or not? And how often is a deception of the senses or an error of the reason accepted as a conviction!... I prefer to doubt everything. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... in which the poet taught. The religion of the East is fatalism. A fatalist who endeavours to shun death ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... how much of a fatalist I am; I would have returned to the abbey, to spare myself the vexations which I foresaw; fate opposed it; I abandoned myself to my star. You do not know the grand ducal palace of Gerolstein, my friend. According to all those who have visited the capitals ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... man of thought, the dreamer, wanting in energy when the moment for action came. He was reputed to be good-hearted, capable, swayed by generous and noble thoughts, a silent man of strong and tenacious will; he was very brave, too, scorning danger with the scorn of the fatalist for whom destiny has no fears; but in critical moments a fatal lethargy seemed to overcome him; he appeared to become paralyzed in presence of results, and powerless thereafter to struggle against Fortune should she prove adverse. And Maurice asked himself if his were not a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... was, that this human being cared. This certitude would have made her put up with worse torments. For, of course, she too was being tormented. She felt also helpless, as if the whole enterprise had been too much for her. This is the sort of conviction which makes for quietude. She was becoming a fatalist. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... because the night might find me dying or dead. So I tossed, with her note clasped in my hand underneath the sheets; and beneath my very body that stout weapon that I had bought in town. I might not have to use it, but I was fatalist enough to fancy that I should. In the meantime it helped me to lie still, my thoughts fixed on the night, and the day made ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... after all, that I blamed, yet the fatalist is human. He suffers in living like other men—sometimes more, because he refuses to struggle in the clutches ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions," he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the mystery ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... business, politics, sports, and society. Love music, art, literature, and nature. Deep interest in mysticism. Am clairvoyant. Have been used many times as a medium. Lead two separate lives, an outer and inner psychic life. Am a fatalist and a theosophist. Profound belief in reincarnation, always have had, because when I was a little child I could 'remember' so much. Have an excellent memory, dating back to my third year. Have always been too self-analytical. Have from my earliest childhood felt myself an alien. Am very sensitive, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his contribution to human happiness. She would marry Jim Travers. The strange part of it was her sudden certainty that she should marry him. She found herself enveloped in a flame of possession, a feeling that he was hers—hers now, this minute, and hers for ever. Beulah was a fatalist, although she had never analyzed her own beliefs enough to know it, but she knew that Destiny had linked her life with his and that Destiny would not be balked. Her mind had been feeling its way, through the darkness of months, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... places and of people. Although she was so enmeshed in family cares most of the time, she could emerge serene when she was away from them. For a mother of seven, she had a singularly unprejudiced point of view. She was, moreover, a fatalist, and as she did not attempt to direct things beyond her control, she found a good deal of time to enjoy the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... A haughty fatalist Byzantium waits What chance the storing centuries bring forth: Another lover almost at the gates, Heralded by the cannon ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, extending over all creatures from the beginning to everlasting; the reality and nature of God's purposes, and their fulfilment in creation and providence; in opposition to the atheist, the fatalist, the deist, the sceptic, and every other who does not believe in the truth of Divine revelation; are made known, and claim to be contended ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... The fatalist, and those who conceive every human volition and action to be the effect of divine agency, have no rational motive, to do, or suffer for religion. "Let us eat and drink, for ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... Kentish mainland. First came a kind of gentlemen-at-large breeze, which took him seawards; then a rival gust drove him back; finally the balloon stopped for a couple of minutes to think out the situation. Reginald Hampton, being by nature a fatalist and by training an aeronaut, awaited the decision without any appearance of impatience or anxiety; when his vehicle was ready to move on, he would try to fall on his feet if possible, but not for the world would he wish to ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... dinner. It seemed to him that he had awakened from a sort of stupor. Life, so gray yesterday, now appeared full of color and possibilities. Most men who either from choice or necessity have knocked about the world for any length of time are more or less fatalists. Jimmy was an optimistic fatalist. He had always looked on Fate, not as a blind dispenser at random of gifts good and bad, but rather as a benevolent being with a pleasing bias in his own favor. He had almost a Napoleonic faith in his star. At various periods of his life (notably at the time ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... upon the vitals of their country. He entailed upon the nation a growing debt, and a system of politics big with misery, despair, and destruction. To sum up his character in a few words—William was a fatalist in religion, indefatigable in war, enterprising in politics, dead to all the warm and generous emotions of the human heart, a cold relation, an indifferent husband, a disagreeable man, an ungracious ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... misfortune which crossed your path and mine again," she went on relentlessly, as much to herself as to him. "But I am something of a fatalist. We can not avoid ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... cannot content himself with mere disapproval. Take, for example, his friends the murderers, Haggart and Thurtell. He shows Haggart as an ambitious lad too full of life, "with fine materials for a hero." He calls the fatalist's question: "Can an Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?"—nonsense, saying: "The greatest victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those unruly passions which are not convenient to the time ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the fatalist whom I have refuted, and prepare again to lay down the first row of cards. But the fellow comes back with, "Those last shuffles were also determined, as ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... one is much pervaded and affected by the people one lives with, even if one does not talk to them. The very sight of some people is as bad as an argument! The ideal thing, of course, is to have a few intimate friends and some comfortable acquaintances. But I am rather a fatalist about friendship, and I think that most of us get about as much as we deserve. Anyhow, it's all worth taking some trouble about; and most people make the mistake of not taking any trouble or putting themselves about; and that's not ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with John Harrington on the ice, she had made every effort to avoid his society. Like many very young women with a vivid love of enjoyment and a fairly wide experience, she was something of a fatalist. That is to say, she believed that her evil destiny might spring upon her unawares at any moment, and she felt something when she was with Harrington that warned her. For the first time in her life she knew what it ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... call myself a philosopher," he went on, "nor am I a fatalist, but I think that most men can face the inevitable with a certain calmness that is only born of absolute despair. Did you ever see a man hanged? I did once. He walked to the gallows as coolly and deliberately as though he were going to breakfast. A week ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... he go into it like Cromwell's soldiers determined to fight in God's strength? Oh, yes, Tommy is a grand fellow, take him as a whole, and there are tens of thousands of fine Christians in the Army. But in the main Tommy is a fatalist; he does not pray, he does not depend on God. I tell you, if this battle of the Somme were fought in the strength of God, the Germans would have fled ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... justify any such imputation on either party. Another is, that the allegation that a calamity was inevitable is one so easy to make and so hard to refute that it is constantly employed to close an embarrassing discussion. You cannot argue with a fatalist, any more than with a prophet. Nations whose conscience is clear, statesmen who have foresight and insight, do not throw the blame for their failures upon Destiny. The chieftain in Homer, whose folly has brought disaster, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and became stupefied. Who would have believed that this trinket that he had found among his father's old traps had come to him from Princess Gulof? that it was the price she had paid for Samuel Brohl's ignominy and shame? Samuel was a fatalist; he felt that his star had set, that Fate had conspired to ruin his hopes, that he was found guilty and condemned. His heart ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... he was doomed. All hope had vanished, and, dropping to the ground, he bared his bronzed ankle, looked at the tiny points where the horrible poison had been injected into his system, and then, like the fatalist be was, he calmly folded his arms and waited for the last moment that was rushing upon him. He was a faithful follower of the Prophet and knew how to meet the inevitable that awaits us all. His companions, ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... think I am just a little bit ashamed of you for that. I'm willing to be a fatalist, and say it was ordained from the beginning that Opdyke must be flayed and hung up for the crows of time to pick; but as for saying in a hushed voice that he is the especial object of some wholly beneficent and divine plan, I can't do it, and I won't. A thing ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the destruction of his house by fire. The apparent indifference with which he had received the first announcement completely gave way to a flood of happiness on hearing of the safety of those he loved. Verily they are not so devoid of feeling as is generally supposed—these fatalist Turks. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... enough to love more than one woman at a time, but unless he is a fatalist he should have brains ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... there arrived from Paris the woman to whom the great sorrow of my life is due. A fatalist might read in her appearance at this particular moment the signs of a prearranged doom. A few weeks later, and her arrival would have been harmless; I should have been shielded from all external influence by the absorbing force of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... But I am sure I was never in a country where I perceived fewer indications of any spiritual life. Every one is busy; every one seems to be happy or at any rate not discontented; every one chatters and laughs and is, one feels, a fatalist. Sufficient unto the day! After all, it is the women of a nation that chiefly keep burning the sacred flame and pass it on; but in Japan, I understand, the women are far too busy in pleasing the men to have time for such duties; Japan is run by men for men. It is an unwritten law that ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... produced. When, however, most unexpectedly, it came home to roost in Brett Street, Mr Verloc, who had been struggling like a man in a nightmare for the preservation of his position, accepted the blow in the spirit of a convinced fatalist. The position was gone through no one's fault really. A small, tiny fact had done it. It was like slipping on a bit of orange peel in the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... rule, excellent. He was very careful about his appearance, and was fond of women without being their slave; in his youth his life had been dissolute. He was above the prejudices of his nation, and prayed very often, although a fatalist. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... him with frank pleasure, and, in a few minutes, she was her usual self again. As Jimmy learned later, she had in a peculiar degree the art of seeing the best side of things. In a sense, she was almost a fatalist, and though she made no disguise about the regret she felt for her ruined life, a moment later she always seemed to put the regrets aside as useless. "I try to keep as respectable as I ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... his breast, and the fatalist resignation which had once already quieted him on board the wreck now quieted him again. "What must be, will be," he thought once more. "What have I to do with the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Annual Review, regards 'vice' and 'misery' as desirable; thinks that the 'gratification of lust' is a 'physical necessity'; and attributes to the 'physical constitution of our nature' what should be ascribed to the 'existing system of society.' Malthus, that is, is a fatalist, a materialist, and an anarchist. His only remedy is to abolish the poor-rates, and starve the poor into celibacy. The folly and wickedness of the book have provoked him, he admits, to contemptuous indignation; and Malthus ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... a fatalist, yet he had a happy and useful way of taking short views of life. In times of extreme depression he used to say to himself, "Things seem black just now, but I know when I get over the trouble I shall look over the black ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... a very superficial argument to say that if a man holds the views of a fatalist he will therefore cease to strive, and will wait resignedly for what fate may send him. The objector forgets that among the other things fated is that we of northern blood SHOULD strive and should NOT sit down with folded hands. But when a man has striven, when he has done all he knows, and when, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... optimists who hoped it might reach its destination; the four guards armed with worn-out rifles that they did not dare use; the four passenger-cars with their window-glass all shot away; the half-dozen Arab artisans carried along for makeshift repairs en route; and the more than brave—the too-fatalist-to-care-much passengers wondering which of their number had an enemy at every halting-place; and along with that the formalism—the observance of conventions such as blowing the whistle and pulling down the signal, on a track ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet, and many other great politicians. It is a strange thing that most men of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers have a tendency to believe ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... system, in this dialogue. Indeed the confusion here spoken of is apparent in Berkeley's own advertisement. 'The author's design being to consider the Freethinker in the various lights of Atheist, libertine, enthusiast, scorner, critic, metaphysician, fatalist, and sceptic, it must not therefore be imagined that every one of these characters agrees with every individual Freethinker; no more being implied than that each part agrees with some or other of the sect.' The fallacy here arises from the assumption of a sect with a coherent ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... dwelling; he knows too much of courts to think that she can stand against that burst of popular fury should it break out. But he looks on as a devout man believing God's promises, and seeing past all instruments; he warns her that 'deliverance and enlargement shall arise.' He is no fatalist; he believes in man's work, therefore he urges her to let herself be the instrument by which God's work shall be done. He is no atheist; he believes in God's sovereign power and unchangeable faithfulness, therefore he looks without dismay to the possibility ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The Muslim is a fatalist, but this may be due less to the teachings of the prophet than to the peculiar quality of the Arab nature, which makes him stake everything, even his own liberty upon ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... his eyes, he did not sleep. All his life he had been something of a fatalist, and this temper had endeared him to Cromwell, who held that no man travelled so far as he who did not know the road he was going. But while in Oliver's case the belief came from an ever-present sense of a directing God, in him it was more of a pagan philosophy. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... not God's will that they should be accomplished. This burden, almost as heavy as a world, which I had raised, and I had thought to bear to the end, was too great for my strength, and I was compelled to lay it down in the middle of my career. Oh, shall I then, again become a fatalist, whom fourteen years of despair and ten of hope had rendered a believer in providence? And all this—all this, because my heart, which I thought dead, was only sleeping; because it has awakened and has begun to beat again, because I have ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well be in motion as at rest, since, with the sail as their motive power, it would require no exertion on their part. Of course this reasoning was purely negative, and might not have gone far towards convincing the Coromantee,—whose fatalist tendencies at times strongly inclined him to inaction. But his comrade backed it by another argument, of a more positive kind, to which ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... said of you which brought it upon him," Meyer replied with meaning. "Otherwise he might have gone unharmed as far as I was concerned. For the rest, I did not interfere because I saw it was useless; also I am a fatalist like our friend, the Molimo, and believe in what is decreed. The truth is," he added sharply, "among savages ladies are ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... Fatalism is sometimes substituted for acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of events is a fatalist. Catholic ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... fatalist, or he never could have conceived the character of Donatello, but he was very largely so. A man for whom a life of action is impossible, and who is thus unable to escape wholly from his own shadow, naturally comes to ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... the workers. But when one falls, another steps into the vacant place,—perhaps the Commandeur himself: these dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before; there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist.... [32] ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... sanctity of life, and enforce these by motives derived from the moral perfections of God, the turpitude of sin, and the necessity of a renewed heart as being essential to religion here and happiness hereafter. But all these considerations are totally independent of the speculations of the fatalist, and are rendered powerless as incentives to action exactly in proportion to the practical influence of these speculations on the mind and ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... hill on the other side of the bay and make straight for the Mission House. We had not a moment to lose. To have remained would have been certain death to us all, and also to Matthew, a Teacher just arrived from Mr. Mathieson's Station. Though I am by conviction a strong Calvinist, I am no Fatalist. I held on while one gleam of hope remained. Escape for life was now the only path of duty. I called the Teachers, locked the door, and made quickly for Nowar's village. There was not a moment left to carry anything with us. In the issue, Abraham and his wife and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... was raised. The plaster Alhambra would be totally out of place and contemptible beside the great temple-palace of Karnak. No less would the granite works of Egypt be considered monuments of ill-directed labor if placed in the palace of the gay and luxurious Arab fatalist, to whom the present was everything, and with whom the enjoyment of the passing hour was ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... delightful thing to be a fatalist, not as that word is generally employed, but to accept that, when things happen and not before, God has for some wise reason so ordained them. We have nothing further to do, when the scroll of events is unrolled, than to accept ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... ter; but 'tain't so ter be! I hain't no gre't fancy fur this secesh business, that ar' a fact. But I'm in fur't, and I reckon I sh'll haf' ter put it through;" and Dan heaved a deep sigh of regret. Without knowing it, he was a fatalist. Being too weak or inert to resist the hand of despotism laid upon him, he yielded to its weight and accepted it as destiny. The rebel ranks have been ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... spreading noisily through the congregation, prompted him to peer through his fingers again. Levi Gorringe was making his way down the aisle—was at the moment quite in front. Theron found himself watching this man with the stern composure of a fatalist. The clamant brethren down below were stirred to new excitement by the thought that the sceptical lawyer, so long with them, yet not of them, had been humbled and won by the outpourings of the Spirit. Theron's perceptions were keener. He knew that Gorringe ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... said Bixiou, with a facetious look; "they have Providence on their side, and Providence will bring them back without you and in spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a fatalist." ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... when Pierre entered the room she rose and left the breakfast table. The sad eyes of Jim Boone followed her and then turned to Pierre. No explanation was forthcoming, and he asked for none. The old fatalist had accepted the worst, and now he waited for doom ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... she deserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having served her turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, who was hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could help being a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It doesn't matter" to everything. He never expressed his thoughts to himself—it was not worth while,—but I think he knew within himself ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... something handy to blame. If, for example, we catch no fish, Tony will blame the tide, the hour, the weather, the boat, the sail, the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate—anything rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not acquiesce in, fate itself ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... for I wanted him to be satisfied that, if I had at first entered the career of the holy priesthood, it had not been through any vocation of mine. He seemed pleased with my recital, spoke of natural vocations as a Stoic philosopher, and I saw that he was a fatalist; but as I was careful not to attack his system openly, he did not dislike my objections, most likely because he thought himself strong ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and continued our way in the dark. Had the Carlists succeeded in apprehending me, I should instantly have been shot, and my body cast on the rocks to feed the vultures and wolves. But "it was not so written," said Antonio, who, like many of his countrymen, was a fatalist. The next night we had another singular escape: we had arrived near the entrance of a horrible pass called "El puerto de la puente de las tablas," or the pass of the bridge of planks, which wound through a black and frightful mountain, on the farther side of which was the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... more happy consequence, none that would more efficaciously corroborate his happiness, than that general indulgence, that universal toleration, that must necessarily spring from the opinion, that all is necessary. In consequence, of the adoption of this principle, the fatalist, if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man— would lament over his wanderings—would seek to undeceive him—would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... profit in the general wreck of his hopes. His remorse after he saw in its bald hideousness what he had done was psychologically inevitable. Although Jesus was aware of Judas' character from the beginning (John vi. 64), he that came to seek and to save that which was lost was no fatalist; and this knowledge was doubtless—like that which he had of the fate hanging over Jerusalem—subject to the possibility that repentance might change what was otherwise a certain destiny. As the event turned he could only say, "Good were ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... his hands with a nonchalant gesture. He was a fatalist worthy of his city, which is now being besieged and ruined not for the first time. The Vandals (I mean the original Vandals) laid waste Arras again and again. Then the Franks took it. Then, in the ninth century, the Normans ravaged it; and then Charles the Simple; and then Lothair; and ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... thousand times to hear people say, 'I don't like this business,' or 'I wish I could exchange it for that;' for with me, when I have had anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always set about it like a fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun was ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... fatalist would have suspected her answer otherwise!" he told himself, for he knew that he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... I was accustomed; for years they had been my daily food by day and by night, and, as I think I have said elsewhere, I am a fatalist, one who knows full well that when God wants me He will take me; that is if He can want such a poor, erring creature. Nothing that I did or left undone could postpone or hasten His summons for a moment, though of course I knew ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... crystallized habit, the result of training and conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education; but these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances, which, even the skeptic must confess he is not. So long as a man has the power to change one habit, good or bad, for another, so long he is responsible for his own character, and this responsibility ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no importance if you ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... them over to that redoubtable transcendentalist, Sam Staples, who locked them up. Thoreau's hook nose and features could be transformed in rare instances into a look of command that no man dare question—it was the look of the fatalist—the benign fanatic—the look of Marat—the look of a man who has nothing but his life to lose, and places small store on that. "A little more ambition, and a trifle less sympathy, and the world would have had a Caesar to deal with," ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... the small cars, which shot through an opening in the wall and into a street of that strange subterranean city. Breckenridge, in the last car to leave the portal, studied his surroundings with interest as his conveyance darted through the gateway. More or less a fatalist by nature and an adventurer, of course, since no other type existed among the older spacehounds of the IPC, he was intensely interested in every new phase of their experience, and was no whit ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... rank superstition, you say? Aye, it may be! But in the region of the front everyone you meet has become superstitious, if that is the word you choose. That is especially true of the soldiers. Every man at the front, it seemed to me, was a fatalist. What is to be will be, they say. It is certain that this feeling has helped to make them indifferent to danger, almost, indeed, contemptuous of it. And in France, I was told, almost everywhere there were shrines in which figures ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... great mystery, and startled by visions of a possible tragedy. Fate had played with him strangely. It had linked him with happenings that were inexplicable and unusual, and he believed that they were not without their meaning for him. More or less of a fatalist, he was inspired by the sudden and disturbing thought that they ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... a pretty little moral," said the Fatalist, "for it certainly proves that do what we will, we cannot get away from our natures. It was inherent in that man's nature to tend bees. Bee-ing was the occupation chosen for him by Fate, and had the beneficent Fairy changed him a dozen times, ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... His religion had done one thing for him: it had made him a fatalist, and fatalists ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... these human lives stood a strong man, the skipper; no doubts assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist among them. He was trusting in himself rather than in Providence, crying, "Bail away!" instead of "Holy Virgin," defying the storm, in fact, and struggling with the sea like ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... protracted. From the midst of the blue haze surrounding him, his earnest scrutiny hidden by the thick lashes that curved downwards to his swarthy cheek, he gazed intently through half-closed eyes at the friend whose presence he found for the first time embarrassing. Fatalist though he was in all things that concerned himself, western influence had bitten deep enough to make him realise that the same doctrine did not extend to Craven. He recognised that self-determination came more largely into the Englishman's creed than into his own. Whether he himself lived ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... very soul seems to be hard. She never would stand contradiction, argument, hesitation, indifference, laziness nor fatigue. She had never been heard to complain, to regret anything, to envy anyone. She would say: "Everyone has his share," with the conviction of a fatalist. She did not go to church, she had no use for priests, she hardly believed in God, calling all ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... That's much better. So you're a fatalist. It's very Greek. I don't see what our dramatists would do ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... which your coldness gives me. Do you know a very strange thing? It is that, with every day, my love for you increases—though that would seem to be almost an impossibility. Why should I not become a fatalist? Remember how, on the third day that we ascended the Shlangenberg, I was moved to whisper in your ear: 'Say but the word, and I will leap into the abyss.' Had you said it, I should have leapt. Do you not ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the law of irony: Zeno, a fatalist by theory, makes his disciples heroes; Epicurus, the upholder of liberty, makes his disciples languid and effeminate. The ideal pursued is the decisive point; the stoical ideal is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an ideal out of an interest. Two ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and boundless faith are proverbial—so much so that some men call him a fatalist; whilst others say, like Festus, "Thou art beside thyself." Neither of these judgments is true, though it is certainly true that, from a desire to oblige others, Gordon has sometimes made errors in judgment that have led him into sad dilemmas. To say nothing of his second visit to the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... rise, turned blindly to seize the jaws that clutched him; and suddenly crouched, loose-jointed, cringing like a trapped wolf—the true fatalist among our lesser brothers. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... no fatalist, son. But I believe in the just law of retribution, as taught in the holy scriptures. There is resentment against you in the jungle family; sometime it may act to ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Nation, did not keep his eye upon the steadily ascending dome of the capitol, nor remark, during the thunders of Gettysburg, the as energetic stroke of the pile-drivers upon the piers of the great Susquehanna bridge. We built while we desolated. No fatalist convert to Mohammed had so sure faith in the eternity of his institutions. More masonry has been laid along the border during the war than in any five previous years. We have finished the Treasury, raised the bronze gates on the Capitol, double-railed all the roads ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... had talked about everything but the thing he had come to say. As he looked out into the garden he felt that he would never get it out. There was something in the way the mint bed burned and floated that made one a fatalist,—afraid to meddle. But after he was far away, he would regret; uncertainty would tease him like a splinter ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... guide, John Every by name, and often had I mourned over his untimely death. All the same, Wambe or no Wambe, I determined to hunt elephants in his country. I never was afraid of natives, and I was not going to show the white feather now. I am a bit of a fatalist, as you fellows know, so I came to the conclusion that if it was fated that Wambe should send me to join my old friend John Every, I should have to go, and there was an end of it. Meanwhile, I meant to hunt elephants with a ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?" cries the fatalist. Nonsense! A man is not an irrational creature, but a reasoning being, and has something within him beyond mere brutal instinct. The greatest victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those unruly passions which are not convenient to the time and place. David did ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... long residence in the East has rendered me something of a fatalist, Cavanagh! Beyond keeping my door locked, I have taken no steps whatever. I ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... the ascendancy over common sense. Though rather reticent about expressing his religious views, he is in many respects intensely religious. He may admit being superstitious and even boast about it, or declare himself to be a fatalist. Fatalism in the vocabulary of the soldier is just ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... rarely used a rifle, as one of his eyes was affected, but the short, stoop-shouldered, grey-bearded man, with the long riding-whip, was always in the thick of a fight, encouraging his men and pointing out the positions for attack. He was a fatalist when in battle, if not in times of peace, and it is told of him that at Modder River he was warned by one of the burghers to seek a less exposed position. "If God has ordained me to be shot to-day," the grim old warrior ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... with a shrug. "This is but the whim of a girl who does not know her own mind. Come—I will be a consistent fatalist. The affair is out of my hands. After all, it is just what I have long wished—though I never dreamed for such good fortune as that it would be Sir Paul Verdayne. She'll simply have to forgive me"—and the Countess smilingly hummed an old ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... anything to the purpose, it reaches the appalling position of Spinoza, that nothing in the universe could possibly be otherwise than it is. And if this be so, then let the Calvinist decide whether he will join with the Pantheist and fatalist, or give some little quarter to the Arminian. Let him decide whether he will continue to employ an argument which, if it proves anything, demonstrates the dependency of the divine will as well as of the human; and instead of exalting the adorable sovereignty of God, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... by some persistent ill luck and was like an oriental fatalist, and having seen her dreams all fade away and her hopes crushed, she would sometimes hesitate a whole day or longer before undertaking the simplest thing, for fear she might be on the wrong road and it would turn out badly. She kept repeating: "Talk of bad luck—I have never had any ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... head in the direction of the Tuileries. I made no doubt that all, indeed, was known in that quarter, but the fatalist who planned and schemed there would meet these men the next day with his ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... weapon? Now Mrs. Cleveland won't you help me? I am not a Humbug, I have too many bullet holes through my body to be classed with that tribe of insects. I begin to feel a little skittish about my age, 35 and not yet Married. Yet I have always been rather a fatalist and incline to Worship some star. The Greeks Worshiped the sun, And moon under the Name of Isis and Osiris, but I am more like the Arab look to the stars for something sublime and unchanging among all the bright ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... am a fatalist. Everything is ordained, so why should I bother? I will live for the day. I will live ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... yet from somewhere upstairs he heard the half smothered cry of a woman. He gripped his revolver in his fingers. He was a fatalist, and although for a moment he regretted having come single-handed to such an obvious trap, he prepared for his task. He took a quick step forward. The ground seemed to slip from beneath his feet. He staggered wildly to recover ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
