Quotes About Uncertainty

A man must not only consider how daily his life wasteth and decreaseth, but this also, that if he live long, he cannot be certain, whether his understanding shall continue so able and sufficient, for either discreet consideration, in matter of businesses; or for contemplation: it being the thing, whereon true knowledge of things both divine and human, doth depend.

Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time. Whatsoever is besides either is already past, or uncertain.

Discard everything except these few truths: we can live only in the present moment, in this brief now; all the rest of our life is dead and buried or shrouded in uncertainty. Short is the life we lead, and small our patch of earth.

So discard all else and secure these few things only. remind yourself too that each of us lives only in the present moment, a mere fragment of time; the rest is life past or uncertain future. Sure, life is a small thing, and small the cranny of the earth in which we live it; small too even the longest fame thereafter, which is itself subject to a succession of little men who will quickly die, and have no knowledge event of themselves, let alone of those long dead.

For us in Easy Company, a new hope stirred. It wasn't a carefree hope, one that fills a man with energy. But an undeclared hope that drives a man to caution. It's when you sense you might actually come through this thing alive.

By the time I began college, anxiety about hell had disappeared—not because I was confident that I was "saved," but because the whole package had become sufficiently uncertain that I didn't worry about it.

Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.

We should not be too confident in our belief of anything. (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I.32)

En política sólo puedes estar seguro de una cosa, de que jamás puedes estar seguro de nada

The goddess Fortune is mad, blind, and stupid, some philosophers maintain. They declare that she stands upon a revolving globe of stone; whither Chance impels this stone, thither, they say, does Fortune fall. She is blind, they repeat, for that she fails wholly to perceive whereto she attaches herself. Moreover they declare that she is mad because she is cruel, uncertain, and inconstant; stupid because she knows not how to tell worthy from unworthy.

It's much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it.

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.

To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die.

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.

Where were we? I've forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever. Right. Yes. The usual choices.

Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.