Quotes About Uncertainty

Duas vezes jurei ser O que julgo que sou, Só para desconhecer Que não sei para onde vou.

We don't even know if what ends with daylight terminates in us as useless grief, or if we are just an illusion among shadows, and reality just this vast silence without wild ducks that falls over the lakes where straight and stiff reeds swoon. We know nothing. Gone is the memory of the stories we heard as children, now so much seaweed; still to come is the tenderness of future skies, a breeze in which imprecision slowly opens into stars.

El misterio de la vida nos duele y nos aterra de muchas formas. Unas veces cae sobre nosotros como un fantasma sin forma, y el alma tiembla con el peor de los miedos, el de la encarnación disforme del no ser. Otras veces está detrás de nosotros, visible sólo cuando no nos damos la vuelta para ver, y es toda la verdad de su terror profundísimo de que nunca la conoceremos.

Deze bladzijden, waarop ik dingen noteer die slechts helder voor me zijn terwijl ik ze schrijf, heb ik juist herlezen en nu vraag ik mij af: wat is dit en waar dient dit voor? Wie ben ik wanneer ik voel? Wat sterft in mij wanneer ik ben? Zoals iemand die van grote hoogte het leven in een dal tracht te zien, zo beschouw ik mijzelf vanaf een bergtop en ben daarbij een onduidelijk rommelig landschap.

I also have my crochet. It dates from when I began to think. Stitch on stitch forming a whole without a whole … A cloth, and I don't know if it's for a garment or for nothing. A soul, and I don't know if it's for feeling or living. What

I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don't know where it will take me, because I don't know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I'm compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it's here that I meet others.

La generazione a cui appartengo ha trovato un mondo privo di certezze per chi possegga un cuore e un cervello. Il lavoro di distruzione delle generazioni precedenti aveva prodotto come risultato che il mondo nel quale nascemmo era privo per noi di sicurezza sul piano religioso, di sostegno sul piano morale, di stabilità sul piano politico.

How little hope ever attains! – Fernando Pessoa, from "The Scaffold," A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics, 2006)

Passa tudo isso, e nada de tudo isso me diz nada, tudo é alheio ao meu destino, alheio, até, ao destino próprio — inconsciência, carambas ao despropósito quando o acaso deita pedras, ecos de vozes incógnitas — salada coletiva da vida.

I feel a kind of horror at the superior tyranny that obliges us to keep walking even though we have no idea what it is that our uncertainty is going to meet.

I have in me like a haze]" I have in me like a haze Which holds and which is nothing A nostalgia for nothing at all, The desire for something vague. I'm wrapped by it As by a fog, and I see The final star shining Above the stub in my ashtray. I smoked my life. How uncertain All I saw or read! All The world is a great open book That smiles at me in an unknown tongue.

I fell, with every sunset, against my hopes and certainties.

And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts' adventurous precept: living doesn't matter, only sailing does.

Y fue así que nos despertamos en un mundo ávido de novedades sociales y que alegremente se lanzaba hacia la conquista de una libertad que no se sabía muy bien lo que era y de un progreso que jamás pudo definir.

Así las cosas, no sabiendo creer en Dios y no pudiendo creer en una suma de animales, me encontré, como otros hombres, en esa distancia de todo lo que solemos llamar Decadencia. La Decadencia es la pérdida total de la inconsciencia, pues la inconsciencia es el fundamento de la vida. Si el corazón pudiera pensar, se detendría.

We were born into the midst of metaphysical anguish, moral anxiety and political disquietude

For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me. I don't know where that carriage will take me because I know nothing.

Whirls and whirlpools in the fluid futility of life!

I came here for no reason, as with everything in life.

A MORTE CHEGA CEDO   A morte chega cedo, Pois breve é toda vida O instante é o arremedo De uma coisa perdida.   O amor foi começado, O ideal não acabou, E quem tenha alcançado Não sabe o que alcançou.   E tudo isto a morte Risca por não estar certo No caderno da sorte

I'm talking metaphysics? But all of life is a metaphysics in the darkness, with a vague murmur of the gods and only one way to follow, which is our ignorance of the right way.

Se mi capita di essere coerente, è solo per incoerenza della mia incoerenza.

I'm handed faith like a sealed package on a strange-looking platter and am expected to accept it without opening it. I'm handed science, like a knife on a plate, to cut the folios of a book whose pages are blank. I'm handed doubt, like dust inside a box--but why give me a box if all it contains is dust?

Nasci num tempo em que a maioria dos jovens tinham perdido a crença em Deus, pela mesma razão que os seus maiores a tinham tido — sem saber porquê.