John Dryden Quotes

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect is already in the cause.

In the fabric of human events, one thing leads to another. Every mistake is in a sense the product of all the mistakes that have gone before it, from which fact it derives a sort of cosmic forgiveness; and at the same time every mistake is in a sense the determinant of all the mistakes of the future, from which it derives a sort of cosmic unforgivableness.

Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unraveling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded.

If something were brought about without an antecedent cause, it would be untrue that all things come about through fate. But if it is plausible that all events have an antecedent cause, what ground can be offered for not conceding that all things come about through fate?

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn't need to happen.

All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.

Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?

Everything always happens for a reason.

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain.

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event.

All is bound by the law of causation

There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

In reality there is no cause or effect, there is only the indifference of the universe.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

I don't believe in luck. I believe everything happens for a reason.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing.

Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.