The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “letters”

Willa Cather on Productivity vs. Creativity and the Life-Changing Advice That Made Her a Writer
Willa Cather on Productivity vs. Creativity and the Life-Changing Advice That Made Her a Writer

“It’s so foolish to live (which is always trouble enough) and not to save your soul. It’s so foolish to lose your real pleasures for the supposed pleasures of the chase — or the stock exchange.”

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Thomas Wolfe on Ambition, Gratitude, and the True Measure of Success, in Letters to His Mother
Thomas Wolfe on Ambition, Gratitude, and the True Measure of Success, in Letters to His Mother

“It is not all bad, but it is not all good, it is not all ugly, but it is not all beautiful, it is life, life, life — the only thing that matters.”

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Tchaikovsky on Depression and Finding Beauty Amid the Wreckage of the Soul
Tchaikovsky on Depression and Finding Beauty Amid the Wreckage of the Soul

“Life is beautiful in spite of everything! … There are many thorns, but the roses are there too.”

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Cézanne’s Only Known Love Letter
Cézanne’s Only Known Love Letter

“Is it not a relief from suffering to be permitted to express it?”

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Vincent van Gogh on Fear, Taking Risks, and How Making Inspired Mistakes Moves Us Forward
Vincent van Gogh on Fear, Taking Risks, and How Making Inspired Mistakes Moves Us Forward

“However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth… steps in and does something.”

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Rilke on the Rewards of Reading and What Books Do for Our Inner Lives
Rilke on the Rewards of Reading and What Books Do for Our Inner Lives

“Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times.”

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Margaret Mead’s Beautiful Letter of Advice to Her Younger Sister on Starting a Family in an Uncertain World
Margaret Mead’s Beautiful Letter of Advice to Her Younger Sister on Starting a Family in an Uncertain World

In praise of “living more intensely and doing better work” whatever life may throw your way.

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Gustav Mahler’s Love Letters to His Wife
Gustav Mahler’s Love Letters to His Wife

“I could sense the bliss that springs from love when one loves with total conviction and knows one’s love to be reciprocated.”

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Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful Letter to Van Gogh on Fear, Bravery, and How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns
Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful Letter to Van Gogh on Fear, Bravery, and How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns

“Bravery is always more intelligent than fear, since it is built on the foundation of what one knows about oneself: the knowledge of one’s strength and capacity, of one’s passion.”

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John Steinbeck’s Prophetic Dream About How the Commercial Media Machine Is Killing Creative Culture
John Steinbeck’s Prophetic Dream About How the Commercial Media Machine Is Killing Creative Culture

Half a century before Buzzfeed, a nocturnal epiphany about the greatest threat to art.

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