Quote of the Day (F. Scott Fitzgerald, on People’s Destinies)

“The extraordinary thing is not that people in a lifetime turn out worse or better than we had prophesied; particularly in America that is to be expected. The extraordinary thing is how people keep their levels, fulfill their promises, seem actually buoyed up by an inevitable destiny.”—American novelist and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), “Majesty,” first published in the Saturday Evening Post, July 13, 1929, reprinted in Taps at Reveille (1935)

Quote of the Day (P. G. Wodehouse, on Fate Waiting to Strike)

“Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.” — British humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

The image accompanying this post shows Hugh Laurie (right) as the clueless Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as his imperturbable butler Jeeves in the British comedy series of the early 1990s, Jeeves and Wooster.

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on Reading ‘The Book of Fate’)

“O God, that one might read the book of fate
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea, and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chance’s mocks
And changes fill the cup of alteration.” —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Henry VI, Part II (1594)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Batman,’ on Madness and Tempting Fate)

“Tell me something, my friend. You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”—The Joker (played by Jack Nicholson) to Bruce Wayne/Batman (played by Michael Keaton), in Batman (1989), directed by Tim Burton, story by Sam Haam, screenplay by Sam Haam and Warren Skaaren, based on characters created by Bob Kane

Quote of the Day (Franklin D. Roosevelt, on What Imprisons Men)

“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” —President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Pan American Day Address,” Washington, D. C., April 14, 1939

America’s 32^nd President died on this day 72 years ago today in Warm Springs, Ga. Many Americans could not imagine the future without him—largely because, having refused to be conquered by fate himself, he would not let his country give in to fear.

Historian William E. Leuchtenburg has titled his analysis of this outsized President’s legacy, In the Shadow of FDR. Roosevelt had his faults, but an easily cowed spirit was not among them, and he communicated this to his countrymen as they faced the Great Depression and the Age of Dictators.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Conrad, on Fate)

"It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth." — Joseph Conrad, Chance (1913)

Quote of the Day (Andre Malraux, on Art and Fate)

“Art is a revolt against fate.”—Andre Malraux, The Voices of Silence (1951)

This 1933 photograph of French novelist-critic-soldier-statesman Andre Malraux (1901-1965) is from the Bibliotheque nationale de France (1933).