fatalism

I know that I'm doomed and I'm not going to struggle against my fate. I am only writing this down so that when you do not see me any more you will know that my enemy has finally triumphed.

The problem with Fate is that no matter how many times you call out to her, she has her own timing that__ irrelevant to whatever anyone else happens to be doing

[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs__hatever__ust so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.

The award for excessive success is eternal doubt and eventual failure.""So what, it's stupid to even try?""No. It's unwise to hope."- Something Like Stardust

It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last__nto positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one__ own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.

There I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.

To accept a little death is worse than death itself.

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like.

The future is certain. It is just not known.

I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it.

Then the prophetess said to the witcher: "I shall give you this advice: wear boots made of iron, takein hand a staff of steel. Then walk until the end of the world. Help yourself with your staff to break the land before you and wet it with your tears. Go through fire and water, do not stop along the way,do not look behind you. And when the boots are worn, when your staff is blunt, once the wind and the heat has dried your eyes so that your tears no longer flow, then at the end of the world you mayfind what you are looking for and what you love...The witcher went through fire and water, he did not look back. He did not take iron boots or a staffof steel. He took only his sword. He did not listen to the words of prophets. And he did well because she was a bad prophet.

From Orient PointThe art of living isn't hard to muster:Enjoy the hour, not what it might portend.When someone makes you promises, don't trust herunless they're in the here and now, and just herwilling largesse free-handed to a friend.The art of living isn't hard to muster:groom the old dog, her coat gets back its luster;take brisk walks so you're hungry at the end.When someone makes you promises, don't trust herto know she can afford what they will cost herto keep until they're kept. Till then, pretendthe art of living isn't hard to muster.Cooking, eating and drinking are a clusterof pleasures. Next time, don't go round the bendwhen someone makes you promises. Don't trust herpast where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust herwords to mean more to you than she'd intend.The art of living isn't hard to muster.You never had her, so you haven't lost herlike spare house keys. Whatever she opens,when someone makes you promises, don't. Trust yourart; go on living: that's not hard to muster.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

I believe in fatalism, the positive one.

I__e been accused of having a death wish but I think it__ life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessly, on any terms whatsoever.

What interest hath this empty world in me? and what is there in it that may seem so lovely, as to entice my desires and delight from thee, or make me loth to come away? When I look about me with a deliberate, undeceived eye, methinks this world is a howling wilderness, and most of the inhabitants are untamed, hideous monsters. All its beauty I can wink into blackness, and all its mirth I can think into sadness ; I can drown all its pleasures in a few penitent tears, and the wind of a sigh will scatter them away (650).

My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.

You can__ change the past. You can__ even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories of our lives.