Three epithets I try to live by:
1. Live dangerously.
“For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: (Gay meant something different in those days).
2. Part of the Serenity Prayer.
“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference…...”
- Anon (disputed) and not that I believe in God.
3. And now the end is probably near (No not Sinatra)!
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…..
- Dylan Thomas