The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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André Gide on Growing Happier as We Grow Older and Using Mortality as a Mobilizing Force for Creative Work
André Gide on Growing Happier as We Grow Older and Using Mortality as a Mobilizing Force for Creative Work

“Age cannot manage to empty either sensual pleasure of its attractiveness or the whole world of its charm.”

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Why We Write About Ourselves: Some of Today’s Most Celebrated Writers on the Art of Telling Personal Stories That Unravel Universal Truth
Why We Write About Ourselves: Some of Today’s Most Celebrated Writers on the Art of Telling Personal Stories That Unravel Universal Truth

“Making art is all about humans and our psychology: who we are, how we behave, what we do with the hand we’ve been dealt. It’s closer to your own bone when it’s a memoir, but the bone is still the bone.”

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The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story
The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story

“The great writer’s gift to a reader is to make him a better writer.”

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Intuition of the Instant: French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Our Paradoxical Experience of Time
Intuition of the Instant: French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Our Paradoxical Experience of Time

“If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer…”

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What Is an Emotion? William James’s Revolutionary 1884 Theory of How Our Bodies Affect Our Feelings
What Is an Emotion? William James’s Revolutionary 1884 Theory of How Our Bodies Affect Our Feelings

“A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.”

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How to Treat the Symptoms of a Rising Reputation: David Hume on the Only Adequate Response to Haters
How to Treat the Symptoms of a Rising Reputation: David Hume on the Only Adequate Response to Haters

On choosing the turn of mind that expands your happiness rather than contracting it.

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Einstein on Grief, Time, Eternity, and the Privilege of Old Age: His Beautiful Letter to the Bereaved Queen of Belgium
Einstein on Grief, Time, Eternity, and the Privilege of Old Age: His Beautiful Letter to the Bereaved Queen of Belgium

“…and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be.”

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Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self: An Artist’s Bittersweet Legacy of Real Wisdom from Strangers Ages 7 to 88
Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self: An Artist’s Bittersweet Legacy of Real Wisdom from Strangers Ages 7 to 88

“Nothing will be what you expected.”

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When Breath Becomes Air: A Young Neurosurgeon Examines the Meaning of Life as He Faces His Death
When Breath Becomes Air: A Young Neurosurgeon Examines the Meaning of Life as He Faces His Death

“When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world…”

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Donald Hall on Growing Old and Our Cultural Attitude Toward the Elderly
Donald Hall on Growing Old and Our Cultural Attitude Toward the Elderly

“When kindness to the old is condescending, it is aware of itself as benignity while it asserts its power.”

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