Certainties

That man is a wonder. Well, he can read the prairie like a book. To see him cut for sign, well, you’d think the good Lord dealt us each our five senses and bottom dealt Mr. Arthur one extra. Still, he is old. I don’t know how it’ll go for him, but I can’t help feeling in the wrong.

 - Your first responsibility is to your household.

Yes, but…

 - I’m sorry. I should not dismiss it with an easy apothegm.

Yes.

 - Gilbert had a saying for any situation. A ready bit of wisdom. He was very certain.

He was a doughface?

 - How did——oh, yes. He was an admirer of President Pierce, yes, very much so. He had fixed political beliefs. All of his beliefs were quite fixed, even those that... fortune did not tend to endorse. He would upbraid me for being “wishy-washy.” I never had his certainties. I suppose it’s a defect.

Oh, I don’t think it is a defect at all. Oh no. Uncertainty——that is appropriate for the matters of this world. Only regarding the next are we vouchsafed certainty.

 - Yes.

I believe certainty regarding that which we see and touch——it is seldom justified, if ever. Down the ages, from our remote past, what certainties survive? And yet we hurry to fashion new ones. Wanting their comfort. (shakes his head) “Certainty”——it is the easy path, just as you said.

 - Strait is the gate...

... and narrow the way. Indeed. Indeed.

-- from "The Gal Who Got Rattled," The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)