if you think about losing everything in a forest fire, it sounds so terrifying, but in my case, for all the terrible losses, slowly all kinds of doors opened and made possible things that might never have happened otherwise. It was like being given a fresh start and a chance to make my life up again from scratch with this tabula rasa and really to craft a life much closer to the life I'd always wanted to lead, a much simpler life, much less cluttered. And so in certain ways, the fire actually saved me from myself and gave me the opportunity to start again.
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The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to hope; and the man who has ceased to hope has ceased to live. For it is by the alternation of terror and desire that we keep alive the trembling flame of experience.
George Santayana — The Life of Reason
It is not by remorse for the past that we can repair our mistakes; it is by attention to the present, and by not repeating them.
Simone Weil — Waiting for God
The demand for certainty is a sign of weakness, and if we are to create a better world, we need a certain willingness to live with doubt, for it is not defeat when we cannot know everything — it is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell — The Conquest of Happiness