“Present action, though futile, is preferable to passive acceptance of such a fate as awaits us.”
Source: A Quest for Simbilis (1974), Chapter 6, “The House on the River” (p. 112)
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Michael Shea 40
writer 1946–2014Related quotes
Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 4, A Brief History of Risk Denial, p. 75

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

“It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.”
Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 23 (p. 116).

Love Is A Losing Game
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem
Context: More than a century ago, in 1804, in Letter XC of that series that constitutes the immense monody of his Obermann, Sénancour wrote the words which I have put at the head of this chapter — and of all the spiritual descendants of the patriarchal Rousseau, Sénancour was the most profound and intense; of all the men of heart and feeling that France has produced, not excluding Pascal, he was the most tragic. "Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it is nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be a just fate." Change this sentence from it negative to the positive form — "And if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it shall be an unjust fate" — and you get the firmest basis of action for the man who cannot or will not be a dogmatist.

and this, my friends, is crucial.
Inaugural Address (1989)

“Useful Things, though Mechanical, are justly preferable to useless Speculations in Geometry”
Arithmetica Universalis (1707), p.248