william ernest henley's invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the Horror of the shade,
and yet the menace of the years
finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

"the worst day of your life so far!"

a third of a decade spent in writing and of course an animated film expressed it more brilliantly; could anyone else has said it better? however, if one prefers an alternative long winded citation from Maurice Merleau-Ponty:


"everything we believed to be thought through, and thought through correctly - freedom and authority, the citizen against authority, the heroism of the citizen, liberal humanism, formal democracy and the real democracy which suppresses it and realizes it, revolutionary heroism and humanism - has all fallen into ruin. [...] Perhaps we are at one of those moments when history moves on. [...] But underneath a clamor is growing, an expectation. Why could it not be hope?"