Quotes About Uncertainty

What kind of life is it always to plan and do, to promise and finish, to wish for the near and the safe? Yes, by the heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want a boat I couldn't steer.

I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs. The world I live in and believe in is wider than that. And anyway, what's wrong with Maybe?

Believe me these are not just words talking. This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow. — Mary Oliver, from "Sand Dabs, Three," West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

They were dreamers, and imaginers, and declarers; they lived looking and looking and looking, seeing the apparent and beyond the apparent, wondering, allowing for uncertainty, also grace, easygoing here, ferociously unmovable there; they were thoughtful.

Jack was thrilled to be going to ancient Greece. But something worried him. "What do you think will happen after we go to Greece?" he asked Annie. "Is this our last mission ever?" "Oh, I hope not," said Annie. "What do you think?" "I don't know. Let's ask Morgan," said Jack.

will be easy, he thought. Not all

I guess I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. Certainly most things can--including the vast majority of what people ascribe to fate, ghosts, ESP, Jupiter rising--but not all

My bias is that it does exist. But I would never say that I know that. Until I prove it.

I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me.

Like one who, on a lonely road,    Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turn'd round, walks on,    And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend    Doth close behind him tread.*  * Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;      Nought may endure but mutability!

Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss.

firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often

Nada más penoso para la mente humana que la calma absoluta de la inactividad y la certidumbre que se siguen tras una rápida serie de sucesos que han excitado los sentimientos, y despojan el alma de esperanzas y de temores a un mismo tiempo.

Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turn'd round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.

Oh expectation, what a frightful thing art thou, when kindled more by fear than hope!

I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety.

I dared not advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.

I am full of fears; for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world for ever.

What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.

Ay! Víctor, cuando la felicidad puede adoptar la apariencia de verdad, ¿quién puede estar seguro de alcanzar alguna felicidad?

there is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.