Quote of the day

Every time we postpone some necessary event—whether we put off doing the dinner dishes till morning or defer an operation or some difficult labor or study—we do so with the implication that present time is more important than future time (for if we wished the future to be as free and comfortable as we wish the present to be, we would perform necessary actions as soon as they prove themselves necessary).

Excerpted from Time and the Art of Living, by Robert Grudin, in the current A Common Reader catalogue. The online version of the quote adds this line: "Disrespect for the future is a subtly poisonous disrespect for self, and forces us, paradoxically, to live in the past."

(The cover of the paper catalogue has a weirdly wonderful photo of a row of baobab trees from Thomas Parkenham's book, The Remarkable Baobab.)