After-Orts #60

So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
     -- George Orwell, Why I Write


Wealth is like sea-water: the more we have, the thirstier we become, and the same is true of fame.
(Der Reichtum gleicht dem Seewasser: Je mehr man davon trinkt, desto durstiger wird man…)
     — Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) 
 
 
Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?
     ― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
 

A hidden haiku from a NYT story about a Ukrainian soldier who worries for his children:
   They give him strength, but
    he fears what would happen if
    he didn’t come back.