Destiny Quotes (3)
All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.
The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself … are the infinitely various 'leads' from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself … are the infinitely various 'leads' from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
Opening sentences of lecture 'Discoveries and Inventions', (1860) in Discoveries and Inventions (1915).
One more word on 'designed laws' and 'undesigned results.' - I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it, I do this designedly.—An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightening. Do you believe (& I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I can't and don't.—If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed.
Letter to Asa Gray, 3 July 1860. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1860 (1993), Vol. 8, 275.
See also: | God (121)
They often say, “What’s the point in astrology if you can’t change your destiny?” Well, it’s true that you can’t change your destiny, but still it helps knowing about gravity.
Quotations: Superultramodern Science and Philosophy (2005), 1