Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

From our reading:

"Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.... Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe."

— From chapter XII of Howards End, my favourite Forster novel, which once again is helping me make the imaginary transition from old year to new.