The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “happiness”

The Remarkable Love Letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
The Remarkable Love Letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

“Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.”

read article

The Tragic Necessity of Human Life: Willa Cather on Relationships and How Our Formative Family Dynamics Imprint Us
The Tragic Necessity of Human Life: Willa Cather on Relationships and How Our Formative Family Dynamics Imprint Us

“In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day.”

read article

Keats on the Joy of Singledom and How Solitude Opens Our Creative Channels to Truth and Beauty
Keats on the Joy of Singledom and How Solitude Opens Our Creative Channels to Truth and Beauty

“The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children… I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds.”

read article

Kierkegaard on Ideals, Happiness, and the False Allure of the Extraordinary
Kierkegaard on Ideals, Happiness, and the False Allure of the Extraordinary

“The Highest is not to comprehend the Highest, but to do it, and note this well, including all the burdens it involves.”

read article

The Five Life-Stages of Happiness: How Our Definition of Contentment Changes Over the Course of Our Lifetime
The Five Life-Stages of Happiness: How Our Definition of Contentment Changes Over the Course of Our Lifetime

“Our meaning of happiness is constantly shaped and reshaped by small choices we make every day.”

read article

Gardening and the Secret of Happiness
Gardening and the Secret of Happiness

“It came to me while picking beans, the secret of happiness.”

read article

An Unassailable Serenity: Edith Wharton on Depression and How to Savor Solitude
An Unassailable Serenity: Edith Wharton on Depression and How to Savor Solitude

“I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity.”

read article

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.”

read article

Love of Life: Albert Camus on Happiness, Despair, the Art of Awareness, and Why We Travel
Love of Life: Albert Camus on Happiness, Despair, the Art of Awareness, and Why We Travel

“There is no love of life without despair of life.”

read article

Theodor Adorno on Work, Pleasure, and How the Cult of Efficiency Limits Our Happiness
Theodor Adorno on Work, Pleasure, and How the Cult of Efficiency Limits Our Happiness

“One is forced to have fun in order to be well adjusted or at least appear so to others because only well-adjusted people are accepted as normal and are likely to be successful.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)