The term contingent is used to describe things that are bounded by chance or dependent on other things.  One of the problems of the human condition (the fact that we're mortal and will eventually die) is that our lives are dependent on things outside of ourselves.
 

So the way I see it, if we're going to have to live under these conditions we need a way to either try and forget about the reality of our existence or at least make it contingent on something positive...and thus my collection of favorite quotes and comics:

 "I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move."
   --Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"I've learned to trust myself to listen to truth and not to be afraid of it and to not try and hide it."
   --Sarah McLachlan

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur..."It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."
   --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things; right now, I'm so far behind, I'll never die."
   --Unknown

I n s p i r a t i o n

"Our thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits to our possibilities."
   --Orison Sweet Marden

"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory."
   --Betty Smith

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."
   --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."
   --James Dean

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
   --Helen Keller

"Sometimes it's as if I have two different hearts. Or are the true and the false mixed in this heart of mine? Every time one half tells the truth, is the other half lying? No, of course not, the heart doesn't lie. Nor does the heart change. What changes are our feelings. Laughter and tears do not come from the bottom of the heart; they are only the outward form our feelings take at any given moment."
   --Higuchi Ichiyo
   (trans. Robert Lyons Danly)

"The smallest deed always exceeds the grandest of intentions."
   --Unknown

"Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish."
   --Anne Morrow Lindberg

H u m o r

"Your mere presence is depriving some village of its idiot."
   --Unknown

"If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything."
   --Bill Lyon

"This life is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do!
   --Unknown

"For every complex problem there is a solution that is concise, clear, simple, and wrong."
   --H. L. Mencken

"As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists."
   --Joan Gussow

"DRIVE CAREFULLY!  90% of all people were caused by accidents."
   --As seen on bumper sticker

"Those who cannot remember the past will spend a lot of time looking for their cars in mall parking lots."
   --Jay Trachman

"[In regards to taking notes in Biology class] every time I turn a page, I wake up...maybe I should get a smaller notebook."
   --Antonina

"We are born with our eyes closed and our mouths open, and we spend our whole lives trying to reverse that mistake of nature."
   --Dale E. Turner

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up and does not stop working until you get into the office."
   --Robert Frost

S h a d o w y   R e c o l l e c t i o n s

"How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend."
   --William Rotsler

"The best things in life aren't things."
   --Art Buchwald

"Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them."
   --Chaim Weizmann

"Love is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity."
   --Helen Hayes

"Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day."
   --Sally Koch

"Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day."
   --William Wordsworth

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
   --Anais Nin

"Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.' "
   --Lao-Tzu

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three in the morning, day after day."
   --F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It's the little things in common that make relationships enjoyable, but it's the little differences that make them interesting."
   --Todd Ruthman

"We come. We go. And in between we try to understand."
   --Rod Steiger

"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought."
   --Albert Szent-Gyorgi

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them."
   --Epictetus

"The one absolutely, unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world is his dog."
   --George Graham Vest

R i v e r b a n k   C a u t i o n

"Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path."
   --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the midst of great joy do not promise anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter."
   --Chinese Proverb

"The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart."
   --Mencius

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."
   --Mother Teresa

"When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."
   --Wilson Mizner

"Say what you have to say, not what you ought."
   --Henry David Thoreau

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
   --T. S. Elliot

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
   --Nelson Mandela

"You can make your world so much larger simply by acknowledging everyone else's."
   --J. M. Laskas

Use caution when standing by the riverbank, minding your own
business.  You might get bounced into the water.
   --Eeyore