Lost time is truly lost

Lost yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset: sixty golden minutes, each set with sixty diamond seconds. No reward is offered, because they are lost forever.

attributed to Horace Mann

hat tip: CH

Orwell notes the ambiguity in "work" and "play"

But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them. The labourer set from digging may want to spend his leisure, or part of it, in playing the piano, while the professional pianist may be only too glad to get out and dig at the potato patch. Hence the antithesis between work, as something intolerably tedious, and not-work, as something desirable, is false. The truth is that when a human being is not eating, drinking, sleeping, making love, talking, playing games or merely lounging about—and these things will not fill up a lifetime—he needs work and usually looks for it, though he may not call it work.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), p. 229 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)

The British empire was what made British life comfy

[T]he high standard of life we enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the Empire, particularly the tropical portions of it such as India and Africa. Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation—an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last think that any left-winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the empire together.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), pp. 191-92 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)

When does change happen?

The two women would 'put up' the preserves over a couple of days and invariably Marthe would ask, 'When does a cucumber become a pickle?'

At first he'd tried to answer that question as though she genuinely wanted to know. But over the years he realised there was no answer. At what point does change happen?

Louise Penny, Still Life (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005), p.184