The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “happiness as moral obligation”

Love, Forgiveness, the Pride of the Protest, and What Makes a Compelling Heroine: Dostoyevsky’s Beautiful Eulogy for George Sand
Love, Forgiveness, the Pride of the Protest, and What Makes a Compelling Heroine: Dostoyevsky’s Beautiful Eulogy for George Sand

A warm celebration of the art of crafting “characters of the most sincere forgiveness and love.”

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Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds
Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds

Enduring ideas for personal refinement from Seneca, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, Emerson, Bruce Lee, Maya Angelou, and more.

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Albert Camus’s Beautiful Letter of Gratitude to His Childhood Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize
Albert Camus’s Beautiful Letter of Gratitude to His Childhood Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize

“I embrace you with all my heart.”

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Advice to the Young
Kurt Vonnegut’s Advice to the Young

“Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.”

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Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It
Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It

“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.”

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Better than Before: A Psychological Field Guide to Harnessing the Transformative Power of Habit
Better than Before: A Psychological Field Guide to Harnessing the Transformative Power of Habit

How to lay a steadfast foundation for “the invisible architecture of daily life.”

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The Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2014
The Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2014

Nabokov’s love letters, Shackleton’s courageous journey, the unsung heroes behind creative icons, Joni Mitchell unbound, and more.

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The Artist and the Anguish of the American Dream: Zadie Smith’s Love-Hate Letter to New York
The Artist and the Anguish of the American Dream: Zadie Smith’s Love-Hate Letter to New York

“The greatest thing about Manhattan is the worst thing about Manhattan: self-actualization.”

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The 13 Best Science and Technology Books of 2013
The 13 Best Science and Technology Books of 2013

The wonders of the gut, why our brains are wired to be social, what poetry and math have in common, swarm intelligence vs. “God,” and more.

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How We Got “Please” and “Thank You”
How We Got “Please” and “Thank You”

Why the line between politeness and bossiness is a linguistic mirage.

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