I Take Fright
“When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it—memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis—the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?”
— Pascal
Live Dangerously
The secret to harvesting the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from existence is to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live in war with your equals and with yourselves! ... The time will soon be past when it will be enough for you to live like shy deer hiding in the woods. Eventually knowledge will stretch out her hand to take what is due to her.
— Friedrich Nietzsche