.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Les bonheurs futurs, comme les rivages des tropiques, projettent sur l’immensité qui les précède leurs mollesses natales, une brise parfumée, et l’on s’assoupit dans cet enivrement sans même s’inquiéter de l’horizon que l’on n’aperçoit pas….(*) Bovary 2.3.132

Like this tweet: In a sense, the true “battleground state” is the human soul itself.

τὸν μέσον δάκτυλον ἐκτείνας — this totally dispenses with the old yarn about the archers at Agincourt.

Iliad 9.38-39. Diomedes to Agamemnon:

σκήπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσθαι περὶ πάντων,
ἀλκὴν δ᾽ οὔ τοι δῶκεν, ὅ τε κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον.

Zeus gave you a scepter to be honored over all/ But didn’t give you courage, which is the greatest power.

Marangoni Effect — which explains what happens when you put dish soap into the greasy water of a dirty pot.

David Copperfield, chapter 48: “Having some foundation for believing by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.”