#certainty

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next. ↗

— Grace Paley

#morality #uncertainty #change

It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity. ↗

— Criss Jami

#being-strong #burden #discernment #fear #guilt

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#death #falling #featureless #labyrinth #nothing

Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#decisions #doubts #death

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite. ↗

— Philip K. Howard

#government #law #rules #uncertainty #death

The road of 'God alone' struck me with unsettling fear. So I lingered in a kind of limbo. Unable to go back, unable to go on. Uncertain. Tentative. How strange that we tend to stand ankle-deep in the spiritual life even though the grounding depth of intimacy with God is the most nourishing experience of our lives and affirms our very being! ↗

— Sue Monk Kidd

#experience

There exists a great uncertainty that comes with life. It is like a tree, its roots formed below the surface, its body penetrating a layer of top soil, its roots spreading outward, and affecting the domain it inhabits. With this natural uncertainty one feels lost, almost incapable of discovering his or her own true purpose. With all of this, one begins to search for that true purpose, always unsure if it is the right path. These feelings come from within, fueled by a catalyst that instills these doubts. However, with its great power, the catalyst is undefinable and unyielding. It is then within question if one can truly move away from the catalyst or really understand how one should feel when affected by it. ↗

— Aubrey Williams

#life

From the house of unbelief to true religion is a single breath; From the world of doubt to certainty is a single breath; Enjoy this precious single breath, for the harvest of our whole lives is that same one breath. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#certainty #doubt #lifetime #lives #religion

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#ignorance #knowledge #open-mindedness #science #willful-ignorance

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image. ↗

— Timothy Garton Ash

#certainty #days #direct #few #however