Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- phrase A recognition that others' misfortune could be one's own, if it weren't for the blessing/kindness/luck bestowed by fate or the Divine.
- phrase Man's fate is in
God 's hands. - phrase More generally, our fate is not entirely in our own hands.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Allegedly from a mid-sixteenth-century statement by John Bradford, "There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford", in reference to a group of prisoners being led to execution.
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Examples
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