Aphorisms for a Rainy Day

I am periodically prone to ambushes from the adversary -- or something -- that let me know I've wasted my life and that all this spirituality business is a rationalization. A dodge. So I know very well how to be a skeptic.

Deep faith is only that of the skeptic who prays.

Moreover,

There is some collusion between skepticism and faith: both undermine human presumptuousness. 

Back when I first dabbled in philosophy, I was drawn to existentialism. In hindsight, I was probably just depressed, because if depression had an ideology it would be the meaninglessness of existentialism.  

Dávila has many aphorisms that go to this darker side of life, for example, how could he say this if he didn't know this?

He who does not search for God at the bottom of his soul finds nothing there but mud.

Or this:  

When providence gives us the destiny we desire, we soon discover that to accept it requires a desolating resignation.

Indeed, 

Who is more than the miserable site of an epiphany?

But Señor, I find your little epiphanies to be quite helpful. Don't be so hard on yourself. 

Self-satisfaction is pathetic proof of lowliness. 

Okay, but--

Men are less mediocre when they do not think themselves obligated not to be.

Maybe you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed? 

Man is nothing but the spectator of his impotence.

A little perspective perhaps? Look on the bright side, and all that?

Any satisfaction is a form of forgetfulness.

That's not very promising. Have you made no progress? 

There is no spiritual victory that is not necessary to win anew each day.

That's at least a form of victory, no? 

Every life is an unsuccessful experiment.

That's a bit categorical. 

He who wishes to avoid grotesque collapses should look for nothing in space or time that will fulfill him.

Nothing? Are you sure you're not an existentialist in disguise? 

The briefest commotion of the soul makes us feel that our existence is like a grave that is being filled.

You sound like Kafka in his arthropod phase.

Man does not have the power to do anything important. Only to hope that what he does will have an important result.

Now, on the other hand,

God sometimes prunes our branches like an impatient gardener.

And 

Faith in God does not solve problems, but makes them ridiculous.

So cheer up:

Defeats are never definitive when they are accepted in good humor.