Quotes About Uncertainty

The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt, In that fear doubteth thee.

It was a profound pleasure to her not to know what was coming next, provided some one whom she loved did.

Where is the good of planning upon an if? To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.

Of all useless things a knowledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way to take—would make you see double instead of single.

Grave doubts as to whether I was in my place in the church, would keep rising and floating about, like rain-clouds within me.

Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills; neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action. It is its noblest exercise to act with uncertainty of the result, when the duty itself is certain, or even when a course seems with strong probability to be duty.

What is the matter with your master? George asked Dawtie as they bounced along toward Potlurg. God knows, sir. What is the use of telling me that? I want you to tell me what YOU know. I don't know anything, sir.

Love is as rare as a star. I thought the stars were anything but rare, uncle. That's because you never went out to find one for yourself, Katey. They would prove a few miles apart. But it would be big enough when I did find it. Right, my dear. That is the way with love.

Where is the good of planning upon an if? To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.

Herein, too, lies a despicable certainty: the galaxy is rife with terror. It crowds the shadows, lurks at the threshold, watches from behind every half-closed door. The dark side is ever present, waiting to tempt the unwary, to make monsters of the benign, to twist the bright spark of the imagination toward fear. Yes, the ways of the dark side are insidious indeed, but they are not unknown—not if you know where to look. Or should that be . . . where not to look?

But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable

We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.

It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.

We may be together for another six months—a year—there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be?

The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected moment.

You always, I notice, feel the same when you are under heavy fire - not so much afraid of being hit as afraid because you don't know where you will be hit. You are wondering all the while just where the bullet will nip you, and it gives your whole body a most unpleasant sensitiveness.

I understood HOW: I do not understand WHY.

He had reached the age when the future ceases to be a rosy blur and becomes actual and menacing.

He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side?

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer? You know the answer, of course.

They were a bit shaken, and sometimes a little dispirited. But at least they never lived to know that everything they'd believed in was just so much junk. They lived at the end of an epoch, when everything was dissolving into a sort of ghastly flux, and they didn't know it. They thought it was eternity. You couldn't blame them. That was what it felt like.

Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs.

But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive.