But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger in the end is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is a daring adventure or nothing.
We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know - or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know. The unexamined life is not worth living. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, they make them. We operate as if the options available to us, our failures and successes, are simply a matter of circumstance, skill, knowledge or experience.