"I
saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the
story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful
future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and
children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a
brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and
another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig
was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with
queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady
crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I
couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig
tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which
of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but
choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to
decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they
plopped to the ground at my feet."
--from The Bell Jar, Slyvia Plath.
Again, this is one of those things that's impossibly difficult to decide. I could have put in a funny one-liner and be done with it, but I didn't.*
Incidentally, this one comes a close second:
"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If
the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been
different."
- by who else but Oscar Wilde in Dorian Gray.
*Oh wait...
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