So there are two reasons to embrace what happens. One is that it's happening to you. It was prescribed for you, and it pertains to you. The thread was spun long ago, by the oldest cause of all.

Whatsoever is, was made for something: as a horse, a vine. Why wonderest thou? The sun itself will say of itself, I was made for something; and so hath every god its proper function. What then were thou made for? to disport and delight thyself? See how even common sense and reason cannot brook it.

Willingly therefore, and wholly surrender up thyself unto that fatal concatenation, yielding up thyself unto the fates, to be disposed of at their pleasure.

Love only what befalls thee and is spun for thee by fate. For what can be more befitting for thee?

Change is the universal experience. Thou art thyself undergoing a perpetual transformation and, in some sort, decay: aye and the whole Universe as well.

God give me patience to reconcile with what I am not able to change. Give me strength to change what I can. And give me wisdom to distinguish one from another.

There is a river of creation, and time is a violent stream. As soon as one thing comes into sight, it is swept past and another is carried down: it too will be taken on its way.

When near his death, being asked by the tribune for the watchword, he said, Go to the rising sun, for I am setting.

Did not he, then, who, if he had died at that time, would have died in all his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at that time?

The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.

But the adjectives change," said Jimmy. "Nothing's worse than last year's adjectives.