Explore "The Thrilling Moment" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"In angling, as in all other recreations into which / excitement enters, we have to be on our guard, so that we / can at any moment throw a weight of self-control into the / scale against misfortune; and happily we can study to some / purpose, both to increase our pleasure in success and to / lessen our distress caused by what goes ill. It is not only / in cases of great disasters, however, that the angler needs / self-control. He is perpetually called upon to use it to / withstand small exasperations. " / -- SIR EDWARD GREY: Fly-Fishing.
Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less of a turning-point. Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of chances, and if we were always conscious of them they would worry us almost to death.