Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him. - Murray Leinster

And, just as she had responded to primitive prowess, so Ron reacted to feminine admiration by an enormously increased urge to accomplish.

As a young man he was considered promising. If he had been interested in such matters, he might have had a moderately successful career in politics, as politics was practiced in his nation. But he liked things. Real things.

Most men develop convictions about the cosmos and such beliefs come in two varieties. One kind is a conviction that the cosmos does not make sense. That it exists by chance and changes by chance and human beings do not matter. This view produces a fine complacency. The other kind is a belief that the cosmos does make sense, and was designed with the idea that people were going to live in it, and that what they do and what happens to them is important. This theory seems to be depressing.