Quotes About Uncertainty

Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better only god knows.

Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity.

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can layabout it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide-and-seek and think that no one can see them.

Milarepa wrote: In horror of death, I took to the mountains— Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death, Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind. Now all fear of death is over and done.

Knowing and realizing this, shouldn't we listen to Gyalsé Rinpoche when he says: Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions. If you have got to think about something— Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death . . .

As a Tibetan saying goes: "Tomorrow or the next life—which comes first, we never know.

Frederick, is God dead?

But what we thought to be 'right,' turned out overnight to be 'wrong.' We may live another forty or fifty years, but are we ever going to be able to believe in anything again—in a 'right' that can't be altered, in a 'wrong' that isn't going to change on us? If we don't resolve this for ourselves, no amount of study is ever going to help us build conviction in anything.

You take your reader to the cliff's edge. There you hang your hero by his fingertips. You are not to behave like a compassionate human being. You are not a rescuer. Your job is to avoid rescuing the hero as long as possible. You leave him hanging.

Suspense builds when the reader wants something to happen and it isn't happening yet. Or something is happening and the reader wants it to stop, now. And it doesn't.

Death was far less terrible than the living prospect that was before us

My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.

I sensed that he was dead, but wasn't sure if death was forever. It seemed best to stay nearby, in case the chance came to make everything changed.

I want my life to be mystifying' she declared, although she didn't know what she meant

When in doubt, use your brain. If yo have one.

But we'll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we'll have each other

Oh, God. I can't do this. I only slightly want to have a baby. I think. I actually don't know at all.

I was tempted to run in the opposite direction rather than follow her anywhere.

I have told you, my friend: do not expect always to be given the answer.

I was unsure how I felt about this. I used to worry about not knowing how I felt in certain situations, but I had more recently decided to treat them as a convenient opportunity to feel nothing at all.

Nothing is ever known for certain in this world, Michael.

Here is my recommendation: wherever possible, treat anything you can as a mystery. Why? Because mysteries make life better. I love mysteries, including the desperately-craving-an-answer part, more than I love their solutions. Definite answers shut down possibilities, while an unsolved puzzle ignites our imagination and invites us to think, 'What if it turns out to be something shocking and unguessable that will well and truly blow my mind?'.

What happened to you, baby?