Every Man Has But One Destiny

From Mario Puzo's The Godfather (1969). The line encapsulates the novel's fatalistic undercurrent: every character, however powerful or cunning, is moving along a track that was set for them by birth, circumstance, and the choices of previous generations. For Vito Corleone, destiny is not a comfort but a fact — the Don's rise from a Sicilian village to the heights of organised crime in America is presented less as a triumph of free will than as the inevitable unfolding of a particular kind of character.