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“The wheel is come full circle.”
Voice: Fictional character · Edmund
The image describes consequences returning to their starting point and fortunes reversing over time.
Source note: King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3.
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“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”
Voice: Fictional character · First Lord
Human life is pictured as a fabric woven from favorable and painful threads rather than a story made from only one kind of experience.
Source note: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3.
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“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
The verse places change inside a larger rhythm of seasons and purposes, making it useful for thinking about acceptance when one phase of life gives way to another.
Source note: Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the King James Version, opening the sequence of contrasting times and seasons.
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“Things do not change; we change.”
A changed mind can make the same circumstances appear different, reminding us that development alters perception as well as behavior.
Source note: Walden, Conclusion; Thoreau contrasts altered circumstances with changes in the perceiver’s own outlook.
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Socrates links a worthwhile human life with reflection on beliefs, conduct, and reasons rather than unexamined routine.
Source note: Apology 38a; wording varies by translation.
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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Thoreau challenges ordinary routines by suggesting that outward normality can hide inward dissatisfaction.
Source note: Walden, “Economy”; Thoreau contrasts outwardly conventional lives with concealed dissatisfaction in his opening critique of ordinary economic arrangements.