Imagine the horror with which darkness, rain, and wind, fill persons who have lost their way in the night; and who, consequently, have not the pleasant prospect of warm fires, dry cloaths, and other refreshments, to support their minds in struggling with the inclemencies of the weather.
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
My Tasks ToDo tracking list has 28 items. Starting at the top row, it’s nice to know, without having to decide, what’s to be worked on next.
All 28 tasks in the sequence can be done in one day, but completing the entire list, even at nine minutes per item, would be 252 minutes, or 4.2 hours out of the 16 available to me.
No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Martin Luther King, Jr (1963)
–Neuharth
Forge your own path, trust in the magic of individuality.
Though the methods vary, the mission is the same: to realize that we are all of us temporary & fragile beings.
Shot here from who knows where, bound for who can tell, we can love ourselves and each other while we’re here.
Elizabeth Berg
Singer: Is there anything you’ve been able to draw upon, David? Is there comfort in the past?
Milch: I feel the past falling away and the attachments of regret for what wasn’t done or was done badly or was done without sufficient sympathy, and it was for that reason that our granddaughter’s visit was such a redemptive and compelling occurrence. Everything is an adventure for her and a delight and a surprise, an opening up, and that’s a big gratification.
Singer: I’ve never thought of you as a sentimental person, but maybe I misread that. How would you characterize yourself?
Milch: As an unsentimental person.
–David Milch’s Third Act by Mark Singer (New Yorker May 20, 2019)
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all, cling onto your back, and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it devour your remains, for all things will kill you, both slowly & fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
Kinky Friedman
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars, and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.
But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish by Douglas Adams (1999)