Quotes About Uncertainty

In the torpor of the afternoon the remembered road had the slightly menacing and elusive familiarity of a place in a dream when one thinks: I have been here, yet where is it and what is going to happen?

His sudden decision not to see her any more was utterly incomprehensible to the girl, it was a death sentence from a hidden authority for an unknown crime. Nothing had changed, and then there was suddenly this.

Now that the doors of possibility had magically opened one after the other, Ludens realised how much comfort he had derived from uncertainty.

Como todavía no hablase, dije: —¿Podríamos ser felices? Honor dijo: —Esto no tiene nada que ver con la felicidad, nada en absoluto. Era cierto. Acepté la promesa de sus palabras. Dije: —No sé si sobreviviré a ello. Honor dijo con una espléndida sonrisa: —¡Tienes que correr el riesgo!

Suppose she never got into art school, suppose she was not a painter after all? Suppose the talents which others had persuaded her she possessed were to abandon her overnight, or turn out to have been unreal all the time? Suppose she had to take a typing course or live with a word processor? I would die, she thought, I would kill myself or make myself die of grief. Already there was one great deep grief in her life.

He thought, I haven't got much longer before some sort of collapse. He could not think if this would be a collapse of mind or of body. Mind and body seemed utterly fused now in cold aching pain, and darkness.

If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives.

She began to feel that if there had ever been a bus she had by now certainly missed it.

I'm not a lucky person who makes radiant decisions which are obviously right.

Then she thought, is this really all I have to look forward to, is this what I have to comfort myself with?

What is God anyway? A dark place —

You say we don't know the consequences of actions. But we don't know the consequences of inactions either, and inactions are actions.

He thought about the future and it was a vibrating darkness. He felt fear.

In faith I know not why I am so sad. Ludens did not reply to this remark which Gildas often uttered.

There are those who, even if valued, remain sinister witnesses from the past. James is for me such a witness. It is not even clear whether we like each other. If I were told today that James was dead my first emotion might be pleasurable; though how much does this prove?

Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people's imperfection.

But these speculations are too nightmarish. Better to feel 'I shall never know'.

Life can be sudden.

Nothing happened; yet there were disturbing signs and portents.

I did not harbour intelligent doubts about whether Hartley would go on loving me, naturally I knew that she was mine forever. But as we closed our eyes upon tears of joy there was cosmic dread.

I'm being led — on some dark way.

As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. I feed upon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that is my drama.

Tuesday? My whole concept of the future had crumpled.

Louise thought, what will happen to them — perhaps just this is the beginning of some awful end.