Quotes About Uncertainty

They were walking along a roadway of great slabs of stone set down one after another, the beginning and end of which they could take in at a glance, a road rising from and heading toward nowhere now. "You can't get there from here," William said, using a Down East accent. "Anymore." Maine, they thought of Maine, then. Evidently this truncated road could still carry them as far away and as long ago as that.

I wondered someday if the devil might wake up and see he got the wrong girl, what will happen then?

My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop to read it.

How fragile our lives are anyway. How quickly things can change forever.

It is manifest that the existence of unstable conditions renders impossible the prediction of future events, if our knowledge of the present state is only approximate and not accurate.3

Look," she said quietly, "I can't lie to you and say that losing our jobs like this is easy. It isn't. But the point is that it'll be okay; we'll be okay. And we want to know that you will be, too.

I don't know yet what we're called, or if we have a name. I know so little and need to learn so much. I'm many things, detective, and all of them love you.

I don't understand how to grow up," she cried, sinking into Robin's arms. "I'm so scared we're going to die here and I'll never figure it out.

Well, I like him. There's a darkness to him. But does he make it all the way through?" She shrugged. "It's entirely up to him." "What do you mean?" He smiled quizzically at her. "Characters talk to you. Transform. Make choices," she replied. "Choices," he echoed. "Of who they become.

Who am I, in French? I really don't know -- a bit of everything, perhaps.

You should always play with and not according to the rules, he says, because a life with no danger in it is not a life.

Decidedly, the more I think about these things, the more at sea I feel.

You have no idea when or how God will answer your prayers, but don't stop praying.

When we change and grow into new versions of ourselves, we have to tolerate a lot of uncertainty.

The meanderings of the heart and mind are fickle and are often wont to be withdrawn or amended.

I never really knew her," I said. "But you loved her," Ida answered, and again I wasn't sure if she meant that as an accusation or comfort. Was it less important or more important to know someone than to love them?

Another way the Stoics counsel us to adapt to the uncertainty of outcomes is through an analogy with archery. In shooting an arrow, the "objective" is to hit the target, but the "goal" or "end" "is to do all in one's power to shoot straight," "to do all one can to accomplish the task.

human beings are the only creatures to spend the present driving themselves crazy about the future.

Often, Bessie would reply, "Child, I don't think that's a question anyone on this earth has the true answer for. The best advice I can give you is to keep reading.

Two different kinds of people exist: Those who wade cautiously into the shallows and those who throw themselves headlong into the roaring surf.

The events we live through taught me to be sure of nothing about other people. They taught me to expect danger around every corner. They taught me to understand that there are people in this world who mean you harm. And sometimes, they're people you say they love you.

So I would teach myself to live in constant uncertainty, moment by moment, step by step. I would live as if I were dead already. With nothing to lose, nothing could surprise me, nothing could stop me from fighting; my fears would not block me from following my instincts, and no risk would be too great.

We were playing a game against an unknown and unforgiving opponent. The stakes were terrible—play well or die—but we didn't even know the ground rules.

We're only pretending everything is normal because we don't know what else to do.