only one thing is certain
Page 29 only one thing is certain: that nothing is certain. And nothing is more wretched or arrogant than man. From Pliny the elder.
— from Takeoff Into Chaos · How to Live by Sarah Bakewell
In the book
"Only one thing is certain — that nothing is certain. And nothing is more wretched, or more arrogant, than man." — Pliny the Elder (Sample epigraph — or use your own line; you put it well yourself in, that the idea life will hold still and stick to a plan is an illusion, because chance tears through everything, sometimes with the force of a hurricane.) In the last chapter we stood at the landing and looked back down the whole length of the flight. […] None of this is new, and that itself is part of the lesson. Pliny said plainly that the only certainty is that nothing is certain; Churchill grumbled that the future is just one damned thing after another. Our own book of Ecclesiastes looked the same fact in the eye without flinching: one generation goes and another comes and only the earth remains; the sun rises and sets and hurries back to rise again; what has been is what will be, and there is nothing new under the sun. — Takeoff Into Chaos