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June 9 - June 20, 2024
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
Some rise to present danger, not I. My gift is forethought. Threatened closely I grow stupid,
The machine conceals the machinations.
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
he has learned his job in doing it, like us all.
Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
They were without shame and without desire, like the angels. But it is not human to be without shame and without desire.
Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession. . . .
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“A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.”
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us.
They must play fair with one another; there’s not enough to cheat with.
I had come to accept such uncertainties with a quiet heart.
