#uncertain

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#certain time #chance #demanded #every #happiness

There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty. ↗

— Rupert Sheldrake

#certain #kind #scepticism #uncertainty

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future. ↗

— Anatole France

#events #fears #future #hopes #man

Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#uncertainty #sisters

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. I fyou won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#science #uncertainty #science

In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse. ↗

— Robert Fripp

#creative #creativity #despair #hope #love

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. ↗

— Sherwood Anderson

#future #ghosts #life #manhood #nothingness

the living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty. ↗

— Carrie Ryan

#living #religion #uncertainty #wonder #death

...surely by now you must know: It’s love; it’s love—but will there ever be good news?... ↗

— John Geddes

#love #uncertainty #unrequited #love

It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse. ↗

— Wm. Paul Young

#control #control-freaks #god #law #law-and-gospel