To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a new train of events that is beyond your control.
I've been through a lot of ups and downs. I've been on both sides of it all, I guess. So there's not one specific event or thought that I'm dealing with or drawing from necessarily.
Every shrink knows that it's not the event itself but how you respond to it that tells the story. Take ten assorted individuals, expose them all to the same life trial, and they will each suffuse it with exquisite personal detail and meaning.
The soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.
There are some with whom we may study in common, but we shall find them unable to go along with us to principles. Perhaps we may go on with them to principles, but we shall find them unable to get established in those along with us. Or if we may get so established along with them, we shall find them unable to weigh occurring events along with us.
It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.