That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. (p.175)

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud,if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

the mastery of historical destiny is a tortuous process in which powerful forces may be beguiled, deflected, and transmuted but never simply annulled or defied.

Our desires interweave with one another; and in the confusion of existence, it is seldom that a joy is promptly paired with the desire that longed for it.

Modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and not of it.

Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity. (Wakefield)

Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies.

We have far too many ways to interpret past events for our own good.

We are all woven together in the great web of humanity, and whatever we can do to benefit and uplift others will reflect in blessing upon ourselves.

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes — one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

No story sits by itself. Our lives connect like threads on a loom, interwoven in ways we never realise.

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.

Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.

I'm at the mercy of a destiny that isn't mine.