Quotes About Uncertainty

The chronic fun of writing, the distraction of it, was not knowing.

Also there was the thrill, basis indeterminable, which made Glinda shy, and caused her to rush her words, and to speak in a false high voice like an adolescent. How quickly you could be thrown back to the terrible uncertainty of your youth! For

It's true cats have nine lives, you know. But cats can't count. So I don't know where I am.

That's doubt for you, it scours hope out of everything

One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past. —Elias Canetti, The Human Province

Upholders may struggle in situations where expectations aren't clear or the rules aren't established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they're breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules, unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: What we assume will be temporary often becomes permanent; what we assume is permanent often proves temporary.

Our lives are in the space between Isaiah Berlin's "We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss" and Borges's Garden of Forking Paths, where every choice produces a quantum explosion of alternate future.

Like Buridan's Ass, the donkey that starves because it can't decide between two bales of hay, I become paralyzed by indecision.

I felt light and heavy at the same time. I wondered if the itako we visited had really talked to my dead friend, if they actually talk to anyone, or were they simply meting out consolation at two thousand yen a shot? I didn't care. We are always looking for difficult truths in easy contexts and demanding simple answers within complicated wholes.

It had occurred to me that comfort was only a disguise for discomfort; reference points, a disguise for what will always change.

Japanese ideas about religion, architecture, theater, and literature are based on wa and shunyata—concepts of plentitude and uncertainty, of togetherness framed by impermanence.

People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.

You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby. You're gonna DIE!!!!

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel!

We aren't there yet,' said Bouvard. Let's hope not,' said Pecuchet.

Quanto a Emma, non si chiedeva se lo amasse. Ella credeva che l'amore dovesse arrivare all'improvviso, con fragori e folgori; uragano dei cieli che cade sulla vita, la sconvolge, strappa via le volontà come foglie, e trascina all'abisso il cuore intero. Ella non sapeva che sulle terrazze delle case la pioggia forma laghetti quando le grondaie sono ingorgate, e avrebbe continuato a credersi al sicuro, quando a un tratto scoprì una crepa nel muro.

My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my own doubt.

I wouldn't mind a bit seeing all civilization crumble like a mason's scaffolding before the building was finished--

Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?

Des doutes succédaient à leurs emportements d'espoir. Après des crises de gaieté verbeuse, ils tombaient dans des silences profonds.

Dar cum sa vorbesti despre un rau care nu poate fi descris,care isi schimba infatisarea ca norii, care se involbureaza ca vantul?

Doute. Pire que la négation.