After-Orts #54

If the satisfaction of an old man drinking a glass of wine counts for nothing, then production and wealth are only hollow myths; they have meaning only if they are capable of being retrieved in individual and living joy.
     -- Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, quoted in Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks


Boston is a city that cherishes its accent— one that ignores R’s in some places, inserts them in others, and prolongs its A sounds as if it were opening its mouth for a dentist.
     — Ellen Barry, in the NYT, October 9, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/us/annissa-essaibi-george.html
https://youtu.be/RU4B7Z2DlSM


Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.
     -- Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/01/van-gogh-purpose-letter/


To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.   
  -- Pablo Picasso.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/24/picasso-brassai-ideas-creativity/