The Vision Splendid

Of all the remote streams of influence that pour both before and after birth into the channel of our being, what an insignificant few-and these only the more obvious-are traceable at all. We swim in a sea of environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which we never dream. The sum of it all makes Life, of which we know so little and guess so much, into which we dive so surely in those buoyant days before time and tide have shaken confidence in our power to snatch success and happiness from its mysterious depths.

William MacLeod Raine (June 22, 1871 - July 25, 1954), was a British-born American novelist who wrote fictional adventure stories about the American Old West.