God does not play dice

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”


~Neil Gaiman

Our greatest happiness

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

~Thomas Jefferson

Never miss

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

~Will Rogers

A man stands

A Man stands in a Cemetery, reading a Letter He wrote forgiving His long Dead Father. The Mother of a Girl killed by a Drunk Driver is racked by Fantasies of Retaliation. Your Boyfriend begs You for one more Chance. You say the Mirror You're done hating Yourself. But You know You're not. Maybe instead of Forgive and Forget, it should be Forgive and Remember. Remember that You might have to wake up Tomorrow and Forgive all over Again. And again,and again, The way Your Heart keeps beating like a Drum. Forgive. I Can't. You can. Forgive. Forgive. I can't. You can. Forgive.

~Augustus Hill, OZ

Advice?

Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to.

~Alan Watts

Know the enemy

“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”

– Sun Tzu

It began with the forging of the Great Rings

It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves; immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven, to the Dwarf Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern over each race. But they were all of them deceived, for a new ring was made. In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret, a master ring, to control all others. And into this ring he poured all his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One ring to rule them all. One by one, the free peoples of Middle Earth fell to the power of the Ring. But there were some who resisted. A last alliance of men and elves marched against the armies of Mordor, and on the very slopes of Mount Doom, they fought for the freedom of Middle-Earth. Victory was near, but the power of the ring could not be undone. It was in this moment, when all hope had faded, that Isildur, son of the king, took up his father's sword. And Sauron, enemy of the free peoples of Middle-Earth, was defeated. The Ring passed to Isildur, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever, but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the ring of power has a will of its own. It betrayed Isildur, to his death. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, the ring ensnared another bearer. The ring came to the creature Gollum, who took it deep into the tunnels under the Misty Mountains, and there it consumed him. The ring gave to Gollum unnatural long life. For five hundred years it poisoned his mind; and in the gloom of Gollum's cave, it waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived. Its time had now come. It abandoned Gollum. But then something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable. A hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire. For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all...

~Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings

What do you fear

Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.

~Aragorn and Eowyn, The Lord of the Rings

I can't do this, Sam.

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.


~Lord of the Rings

The positive thing

"The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way, and that's heaven. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind."

-- Natalie Goldberg

Our lives

"Our lives improve only when we take chances ... and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves."

-- Walter Anderson

I learned

"I learned... that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic, striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness."

-- Brenda Ueland

At bottom every man knows

"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."

~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Never miss

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

~unknown

We all need space

We all need space -- free from demands, deadlines, expectations and judgments -- to explore who we are and what life is all about. Free time, with absolutely no agenda, is rich with potential. How can we grow if we have no space and freedom to dream?

"Deny children -- or anyone else -- the chance to do ‘nothing,’ and we may be denying them the chance to do ‘something’ -- to find and do any work that is truly important to themselves or to someone else."

-- John Holt

Coincidence

Coincidence is God's way of performing a miracle anonymously.

~Anonymous

No man

"No man has a chance to enjoy permanent success until he begins to look in a mirror for the real cause of all his mistakes."

~Napoleon Hill

Every cause has it's effect

Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law. Chance is but a name for Law Not Recognized; there are many planes of causation; but nothing escapes the law.

~The Kybalion

Coincidences

Coincidences have never been idle for me, instinctively, but as meaningful as I was to find they were to Jung. I have always had a hunch that they are a manifestation of a law of life of which we are inadequately aware and which in terms of our short life are unfortunately incapable of total definition, and yet however partial the meaning we can extract from them, we ignore it, I believe, at our peril. For as well as promoting some cosmic law, coincidences, I suspect, are some sort of indication to what extent the evolution of our lives is obedient or not obedient to the symmetry of the universe.

~Laurens van der Post

The 50-50-90 rule

The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

~Andy Rooney