Too much happens…. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything…. That’s what’s so terrible.

Faulkner’s lines meditate on the paradox of human endurance. Life “happens” in excess—events, responsibilities, and consequences accumulate beyond what any person ought to carry. Yet the very pressure of that excess reveals an unsettling capacity: people adapt, survive, and continue even when the burden is inhuman. The “terrible” insight is double-edged. It can sound like praise of resilience, but it is also an indictment of a world (and of human systems) that normalizes suffering by proving that individuals can be made to bear it. Endurance becomes less a triumph than a grim accommodation to the unacceptable.