C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Uncertainty
All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.
Everything is sweetened by risk.
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side.
Who knows whether the gods will add to-morrow to the present hour?
All human things hang on a slender thread: the strongest fall with a sudden crash.
Heaven makes sport of human affairs and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.
Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the observer the measure by which to try us; and the fearful power of habit, after a time, suffers not the best will to ripen into action.