{"quotes":[{"text":"Submission, when it is submission to the truth — and when the truth is known to be both beautiful and merciful — has nothing in common with fatalism or stoicism as these terms are understood in the Western tradition, because its motivation is different. According to Fakhr ad-Din ar-RazT, one of the great commentators upon the Quran: The worship of the eyes isweeping, the worship of the ears is listening, the worship of the tongue is praise, the worship of the hands is giving, the worship of the body is effort, the worship of the heart is fear and hope, and the worship of the spirit is surrender and satisfaction in Allah.","author":"Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi","tags":["allah","fatalism","islam","quran","stoicism","worship"],"id":3048,"author_id":"Fakhr+Al-Din+Al-Razi"},{"text":"It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.","author":"Fyodor Dostoyevsky","tags":["actions","agony","depression","despair","fatalism","hopelessness","inevitabilities","shame","struggle"],"id":22766,"author_id":"Fyodor+Dostoyevsky"},{"text":"Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like.","author":"Raheel Farooq","tags":["destiny","determinism","fatalism","fate","free-will","predetermined-endings"],"id":27621,"author_id":"Raheel+Farooq"},{"text":"It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.","author":"Edgar Allan Poe","tags":["fatalism","mankind","self-destruction","unknowable"],"id":55663,"author_id":"Edgar+Allan+Poe"},{"text":"There’s no such thing as probability,' she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. 'Things turn out the way they do.","author":"Johnny Rich","tags":["chance","determinism","fatalism","probability"],"id":61217,"author_id":"Johnny+Rich"},{"text":"What interest hath this empty world in me? And what is there in it that may seem so lovely, as to entice my desires and delight from thee, or make me loth to come away? When I look about me with a deliberate, undeceived eye, methinks this world is a howling wilderness, and most of the inhabitants are untamed, hideous monsters. All its beauty I can wink into blackness, and all its mirth I can think into sadness ; I can drown all its pleasures in a few penitent tears, and the wind of a sigh will scatter them away (650).","author":"Richard Baxter","tags":["death","fatalism","world"],"id":65030,"author_id":"Richard+Baxter"},{"text":"Quinn seemed to have become one of a jaded philosophical society, a group of arcane deviates. Their raison d'etre was a kind of mystical masochism, forcing initiates toward feats of occult daredevilry - 'glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice', to take from the notebook a phrase that was repeated often and seemed a sort of chant of power. As I suspected, hallucinogenic drugs were used by the sect, and there was no doubt that they believed themselves communing with strange metaphysical venues. Their chief aim, in true mystical fashion, was to transcend common reality in the search for higher states of being, but their stratagem was highly unorthodox, a strange detour along the usual path toward positive illumination. Instead, they maintained a kind of blasphemous fatalism, a doomed determinism which brought them face to face with realms of obscure horror. Perhaps it was this very obscurity that allowed them the excitement of their central purpose, which seemed to be a precarious flirting with personal apocalypse, the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself.('The Dreaming In Nortown').","author":"Thomas Ligotti","tags":["apocalypse","arcane","blasphemous","blasphemy","fatalism","fear","hallucinogenic","hallucinogenic-drugs","higher-consciousness","horror","magick","metaphysical","mystical","mystical-encounter","mysticism","mystics","occult","occult-horror","occultism","philosophical-inquiry","sect","sects","terror","transcend"],"id":65926,"author_id":"Thomas+Ligotti"},{"text":"But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.","author":"William Faulkner","tags":["curiosity","fatalism","inertia","joe-christmas","light-in-august","pessimism"],"id":66696,"author_id":"William+Faulkner"},{"text":"And yet, and yet… Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny … is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.","author":"Jorge Luis Borges","tags":["being","destiny","existence","fatalism","jorge-luis-borges","labyrinth","moment","reality","succession","time","world"],"id":108274,"author_id":"Jorge+Luis+Borges"},{"text":"The future is certain. It is just not known.","author":"Johnny Rich","tags":["certain","certainty","destiny","determinism","fatalism","fate","future","inevitability","knowable","predeterminism","predictability","probability","uncertainty"],"id":142086,"author_id":"Johnny+Rich"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":35,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}