“Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.”
Jasper Fforde book The Last Dragonslayer
Source: The Last Dragonslayer
Source: Despereaux = Tale of Despereaux
“Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.”
Jasper Fforde book The Last Dragonslayer
Source: The Last Dragonslayer
“Know that death comes to everyone, and that wealth will sometimes be acquired, sometimes lost.”
Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999)
The Golden Verses
Context: Know that death comes to everyone, and that wealth will sometimes be acquired, sometimes lost. Whatever griefs mortals suffer by divine chance, whatever destiny you have, endure it and do not complain. But it is right to improve it as much as you can, and remember this: Fate does not give very many of these griefs to good people.
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer
The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (p. 387)
Time Patrol
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 126
Context: In life, what more can you ask for than to be real? To fulfill one’s potential instead of wasting energy on [attempting to] actualize one’s dissipating image, which is not real and an expenditure of one’s vital energy. We have great work ahead of us, and it needs devotion and much, much energy. To grow, to discover, we need involvement, which is something I experience every day — sometimes good, sometimes frustrating. No matter what, you must let your inner light guide you out of the darkness.
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone.”
John Steinbeck book East of Eden
East of Eden (1952)
Context: Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then — the glory — so that a cricket song sweetens the ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished…
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis