No longer dream that human prayer
The will of Fate can overbear.[Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.]
Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
The Aeneid [Ænē̆is], Book 6, l. 176ff (6.176) [The Sybil] (29-19 BC) [tr. Conington (1866)]
(Source)
Speaking to dead Palinurus.
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Desist to hope that fates will heare thy prayer
[tr. Ogilby (1649)]
Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.
[tr. Dryden (1697)]
Cease to hope that the decrees of the gods are to be altered by prayers.
[tr. Davidson/Buckley (1854)]
Cease to hope
By prayers to bend the destinies divine.
[tr. Cranch (1872)]
Cease to hope prayers may bend the decrees of heaven.
[tr. Mackail (1885)]
Hope not the Fates of very God to change by any prayer.
[tr. Morris (1900)]
Hope not by prayer to bend the Fates' decree.
[tr. Taylor (1907), st. 51, l. 454]
Hope not by prayer to change the laws of Heaven!
[tr. Williams (1910)]
Cease to dream that heaven's decrees may be turned aside by prayer.
[tr. Fairclough (1916)]
Give up the hope
That fate is changed by praying.
[tr. Humphries (1951)]
Give up this hope that the course of fate can be swerved by prayer.
[tr. Day-Lewis (1952)]
Leave any hope that prayer can turn aside
the gods' decrees.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1971), ll. 495-96]
Abandon hope by prayer to make the gods
Change their decrees.
[tr. Fitzgerald (1981), ll. 506-7]
You must cease to hope that the Fates of the gods can be altered by prayers.
[tr. West (1990)]
Cease to hope that divine fate can be tempered by prayer.
[tr. Kline (2002)]
Stop hoping that the gods' decrees
Can be bent with prayer.
[tr. Lombardo (2005)]
Hope no more
the gods’ decrees can be brushed aside by prayer,
[tr. Fagles (2006), l. 428-29]
As if the gods' fates could be bent by prayer.
[tr. Bartsch (2021)]
Quotations about:
intercession
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Lady Maccon cast her hands heavenward, although there was no one up there for her to appeal to. It was an accepted fact that preternaturals had no spiritual recourse, only pragmatism. Alexia didn’t mind; the latter had often gotten her out of sticky situations, whereas the former seemed highly unreliable when one was in a bind.
Gail Carriger (b. 1976) American archaeologist, author [pen name of Tofa Borregaard]
Heartless (2011)
And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods — “Aye,” asked he again, “but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?” And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Novum Organum, Book 1, Aphorism 46 (1620)
(Source)
