To say "He was a young fool, and now he's an old fool" is to make a distinction without a difference.

Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was as bad as the one into which she had been born. "An exercise in futility," she murmured.

But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.

Events fall into a pattern that we can only discern retrospectively. We credit ourselves with far more agency than we actually possess. Things happen because they happen.

When you were in least of need, people or objects turned up but when you were in a fraught situation, you would never find them.

Ein Optimist ist ein Mensch, der ein Dutzend Austern bestellt, in der Hoffnung, sie mit der Perle, die er darin findet, bezahlen zu können.