Orwell's Roses

I am not suggesting that one can discharge all one’s obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.”

What is it that makes it possible to do the work that is of highest value to others and one’s central purpose in life? It may appear—to others, sometimes even to oneself—trivial, irrelevant, indulgent, pointless, distracted, or any of those other pejoratives with which the quantifiable beats down the unquantifiable.

you might prepare for your central mission in life by doing other things that may seem entirely unrelated, and how necessary this may be.

Actual roses are used for courtships, weddings, funerals, birthdays, and a lot of other occasions, which is to say for joy, sorrow and loss, hope, victory, and pleasure.

Nature itself is immensely political, in how we imagine, interact with, and impact it, though this was not much recognized in his era.

In his writing the hideous and the exquisite often coexist.

writing is sometimes brilliant, often useful, famously prophetic, and even occasionally beautiful, within a definition of beauty that doesn’t have a lot to do with prettiness.

“They were the kind of people who . . . tack a ‘fucking’ on to every noun,” he wrote in his diary of the experience, “yet I have never seen anything that exceeded their kindness.”

preparing a garden and with it a life.