#uncertain

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. ↗

— Anne Rice

#courage #daring #knowledge #questions #risk

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there unable to decide the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they popped to the ground at my feet. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#death

Embrace relational uncertainty. It's called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It's called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It's called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It's called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It's called revelation. ↗

— Mark Batterson

#life #romance #uncertainty #life

You don't know how to live. You live. ↗

— Marty Rubin

#the-unknown #uncertainty #life

What was I supposed to do then I wondered. Was there even a supposed-to for this kind of situation? A situation when when I looked at my receding past everything seemed retrospectively marked by an extreme order and predictability yet all moments since seemed to obey, and promised to continue obeying, their own set of stochastic, undisclosed, and undiscoverable laws. Where I was fully aware of the pitfalls and folly of a finely-tuned narcissism but still the known universe seemed to bend and bend inexorably inward and towards me where it awaited my next move, supremely ready to react accordingly. And how I knew that decisions I would soon make or defer would have near-Sophoclean import and yet nonetheless it all seemed oddly irrelevant. ↗

— Sergio De La Pava

#future #life #past #retrospective #uncertainly

It’s the uncertainty of being accepted that creates the drama in our lives. ↗

— Elizabeth Eulberg

#drama #ethan #uncertainty #drama

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain. ↗

— Mohsin Hamid

#past #uncertainty #uncertainty

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#others #self-doubt #uncertainty #value #self-determination

The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#fight #identification #self-realization #uncertainly #self-realization

Never perceive anything as being inevitable or predestined. The only absolute is uncertainty. ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#philosophy #uncertainty #life