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One night, as this creature lay in bed with her husband, she heard a melodious sound so sweet and delectable that she thought she had been in paradise. And immediately she jumped out of bed and said, ‘Alas that ever I sinned! It is full merry in heaven.’

I believe it is worth being pragmatic when it comes to avoiding disasters. Mistakes are going to happen, and systems need to be able to deal with that and stop them from being disasters.

Actress Elizabeth Bibesco on the importance of failure:

"We learn nothing by being right."

Every human position has a problem with it. Believed in too much, it slides into error. It’s not that no position is correct; it’s that no position is correct for long.

The big questions have to be answered by hours at the desk. So much of the worrying we do is a way of avoiding work, which only delays the (work-enabled) solution.

Even today many travellers leave home not just to see new places, but also to see the whole of the place they have left from the various kinds of distance – cultural, physical, linguistic – that travel opens for them. Indeed, a fascination with this perspective is something I associate with the most experienced travellers.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in people. —Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought;