Quotes About Uncertainty

My emotional state then was cramped and confined, like a room with tightly sealed windows and doors: although love's footsteps could be heard outside the room, I felt they were steps heading somewhere else--until one day when the steps came to a halt and the bell rang.

There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not, cheerful or not. This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is a most natural thing.

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.

Those who believe, believe everything, while those who doubt don't believe a thing.

Because all those people around you and Miss Satoko are moving slowly but inexorably toward a dénouement. You don't think the two of you can hover forever in mid-air like two dragonflies making love?

Minha consciência não passava de uma ferramenta de distorção, e meu controle, de conjecturas incertas, pura adivinhação. [...] O auto-engano era agora minha última esperança. Um ferido não exige que o curativo improvisado esteja necessariamente limpo

Cruel separation guarded the purity of emotion. The pangs of being apart were transformed into quiet joy. Danger aroused the sensual. Uncertainty fostered dreams.

No hay mayor seguridad que la de no saber hacia qué destino te dirigen tus pasos.

Non gli dispiaceva raccontare di sé, ma era spaventoso come l'evocazione dei ricordi servisse solo a rendere la sua esistenza sempre più ambigua e incerta. [...] la parte di ricordanze che aveva la funzione di controllo e di indagine non andava forse accumulandosi di nascosto come letame?" pp.1338-9, Yukio Mishima, Romanzi e Racconti, La casa di Kyoko, volume 1, i Meridiani

One who pans for gold can't expect to dip up only gold, or even attempt to. He must blindly scoop the sand from the river bottom. He doesn't have the privilege of finding out in advance whether he will succeed. Maybe there's no gold in it, but maybe there is. Yet the one thing certain is that the person who doesn't pan for gold never gets any richer.

El correr tiene un fin y el reposar también. La muerte parece que es el último reposo, aunque ni siquiera eso hay manera de saber cuánto dura.

When I think how in the past couple of years your confidence in your knowledge of people has been shattered, how you have obtained in place of peace of mind only uncertainty, and in place of happiness a new, painful knowledge, how you ended at the place where you thought you would begin, and began at the place you had ended ... how you have been able to secure your present, peaceful uncertainty by sacrificing everything, my nature is such that I feel less sympathy than respect.

It was that strange moment, poised on the edge of evening, when lights are still unnecessary, when even in the midst of a convivial gathering, one may be caught by a vague intimation of precariousness.

People tend to be most terrified by the inexplicable. Fear seems to fade when a possible solution arises.

living is merely the chaos of existence...

The person that I like is someone that I am uneasy about...

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?

People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.

If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'. On

We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history's choices are not made for the benefit of humans. There is absolutely no proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along.

Humans are used to thinking about life as a drama of decision-making.

To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and feel at home with the unknown.