#uncertainty

It was like sawdust, the unhappiness: it infiltrated everything, everything was a problem, everything made her cry -- school, homework, boyfriends, the future, the lack of future, the uncertainty of future, fear of future, fear in general -- but it was so hard to say exactly what the problem was in the first place. ↗

— Melanie Thernstrom

#uncertainty

When there's uncertainty they always think there's another shoe to fall. There is no other shoe to fall. ↗

— Kenneth Lay

#another #fall #other #shoe #think

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

When comparing 100 years of experience to 1, there is a way to close the gap. One must simply understand the choices that were taken, the roads that were walked, and that there are no guarantees to an unseen future. ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#miracles #uncertainty #experience

After all else, there’s more yet: I don’t know what, though. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #uncertainty #funny

Love's Course A boatman crossing Yura Strait Has lost his rudder, and the boat Is drifting with uncertain fate, Like love's course, indeterminate. ↗

— Sone no Yoshitada

#uncertainty #love

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either. ↗

— Lauren Willig

#night-jasmine #uncertainty #temptation

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#introspection #uncertainty #poets

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