Quotes About Uncertainty

Did you know," says Marie-Laure, "that the chance of being hit by lightning is one in one million? Dr. Geffard taught me that." "In one year or in one lifetime?" "I'm not sure." "You should have asked.

These numbers, they're more than numbers. Do you understand?" "But we are the good guys. Aren't we, Uncle?" "I hope so. I hope we are.

Esa, se da cuenta Marie-Laure, es la base de su miedo, de todos los miedos. Que una luz cuyo resplandor no se puede detener brille sobre ti y le indique a la bala hacia dónde dirigirse.

She clutches the sack. West, she thinks, this is all she knows, west where the sun goes down, west across the Propontis, and her mind sends up visions of the blessed island of Scheria, and of the bright oil and soft bread of Urbino, and of Aethon's city in the clouds, each paradise blurring into the last. It does exist, Aethon-the-fish told the wizard inside the whale. Otherwise what's it all been for?

Did you know," says Marie-Laure, "that the chance of being hit by lightning is one in one million? Dr. Geffard taught me that." "In one year or in one lifetime?" "I'm not sure." "You should have asked.

And this feeling, permeating every waking minute, that he had made too many wrong decisions.

Her uncle seems almost a child, monastic in the modesty of his needs and wholly independent of any sort of temporal obligations. And yet she can tell he is visited by fears so immense, so multiple, that she can almost feel the terror pulsing inside him. As though some beast breathes all the time at the windowpanes of his mind.

He slips out the door and Konstance sits with her back against the wall and Mother paces, chin jutted, forehead creased, and Konstance goes to the door and presses it.

Different days pass verdict on different men, and only the last day a final verdict on all men, and consequently no day is to be trusted.

But to raise one's hopes is to risk their falling further.

Hope is something that can be very dangerous but without it life would be horribly dry. Impossible, even.

He was numb forever. What clockless hours passed, what weeks and months? He didn't know.

They want to hear that their kids will take over their world. No one wants to hear that the future is already determined. Death's success rate has been 100% so far, yet we still choose to call it a mystery.

By then Mkondo had become more than a game; it was the one way she could be certain she was alive.

What is it to be the parent of a teenager? It is to do what you think best—when really you have no idea what is best. It is to ride out the storms and be back again the next day. It is to give love to a child who does not seem to want it, to a child who five minutes ago seemed to deserve a punch more than anything else.

What was certain, though, is that sheer good luck—the untimely elimination

The sage's point was that life was uncertain and no one should be counted happy till the day of his death.

In his early twenties Cicero wrote the first two volumes of a work on "invention"—that is to say, the technique of finding ideas and arguments for a speech; in it he noted that the most important thing was "that we do not recklessly and presumptuously assume something to be true." This resolute uncertainty was to be a permanent feature of his thought.

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them

There are many things in life that cannot be explained.

That's why life is so different to fiction. Every day is a single page and you have no chance to thumb forward and see what lies ahead.

These had been his plans. But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

I really don't know what to think, Mr Holmes,' Lestrade muttered. 'Well, that's nothing new.

There are, I think, occasions when you know that you have arrived at the end of a long journey, when, even though your destination is still concealed from sight, you are somehow aware that when you turn the corner that lies just ahead of you, there it will be.