DSB - Sao Paolo

from The Gambler, ch. 14 - Dostoevsky

Sometimes the wildest thought, the seemingly most impossible thought, gets so firmly settled in your head that you finally take it for reality... Moreover, if the idea is combined with a strong, passionate desire, you might take it, finally, for something fated, inevitable, predestined, for something that can no longer not be and not happen! Maybe there's also something else, some combination of presentiments, some extraordinary effort of will, a self-intoxication by your own fantasy, or whatever else- I don't know; but on that evening (which I will never forget as long as I live) a miraculous event took place. Though it is perfectly justified arithmetically, nonetheless for me it is still miraculous. And why, why did this certainty lodge itself so deeply and firmly in me then, and remain with me ever since? I surely must have thought of it, I repeat to you, not as an event that might happen among others (and therefore also might not happen), but as something that simply could not fail to happen!

Thomas Jefferson pocket knife