20 Metaphors for destinies

"Manifest destiny" is a phrase that sits down when Japan and China wake up.

" For a number of years, Cuba's destiny was a subject of the gravest concern in Washington.

The destinies of old put poverty upon him as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are Gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions; "And to this day is every scholar poor; Gross gold from them runs headlong to the boor:" Mercury can help them to knowledge, but not to money.

Her destiny was indeed to be one of trials and afflictions even to the end; trials very different in their kind from those which the gates of the Carmelite sisterhood would have opened to her.

Here it is not the protagonist who makes away with himself, nor is his destiny the main theme of the play.

Destiny smiles before us, hope chaunts sweet musicbut destiny is a seahope but a sea-syren; deceitful is the calm of the one, fatal are the promises of the other.

If the destiny of woman is a problem that calls for grave attention even in our enlightened times, and if she is too often a sufferer from the inevitable movements of society, what must have been her position and needs in those ruder ages, unless the genius of Christianity had opened refuges for her weakness, made inviolable by the awful sanctions of religion?

But, at my ease, thy destiny I send, By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.

This is the seal of the absolute and sublime destiny of manthat he knows what is good and what is evil; that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or evilin one word, that he is the subject of moral imputation, imputation not only of evil, but of good, and not only concerning this or that particular matter, and all that happens ab extra, but also the good and evil attaching to his individual freedom.

The "manifest destiny" of the "Anglo-Saxon" race and the huge dimensions of our country are favourite topics with Fourth-of-July orators, but they are none the less interesting on that account when considered from the point of view of the historian.

That fellow's destiny is not a hopeful analogy for you, sir, who believe that we shall rise after we die into some higher and freer state.

" Neither did the British select their island home; destiny and history were again the determining factors.

What Milton has to express is, of course, altogether human; destiny is an entirely human conception.

For him "rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma" (Georg. ii. 534); and in the Aeneid the destiny of Rome is so foretold and expressed as to make it impossible for a Roman reader to think of it except in connexion with the city.

The destinies of men are unaccountable things.

Wonder whether the destiny which seems to bring to us just what we chance to be interested in is a real ordinance of fate or only a seeming onebecause interest in a subject makes us observant.

"My destiny is in an egg, the egg in a pigeon, the pigeon in a camel, the camel in the sea.

Since Islam derived its temporal wealth chiefly by spoliation, the destiny of its plunder was an important question and gave rise to frequent disputes between the Disaffected and the Believers which are mentioned in the Kuran.

The future destiny of the notarial crown prince was the object of many after-dinner conversations on the special days when the poet was an invited guest.

"I was thinking," he said, "that a musician's destiny, even the highest, is a poor return for a woman's love.

20 Metaphors for  destinies