The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “letters”

Voltaire on How to Write Well and Stay True to Your Creative Vision
Voltaire on How to Write Well and Stay True to Your Creative Vision

“Beware, lest in attempting the grand, you overshoot the mark and fall into the grandiose.”

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The Malady of Middlebrow: Virginia Woolf’s Brilliantly Blistering Response to a Patronizing Reviewer
The Malady of Middlebrow: Virginia Woolf’s Brilliantly Blistering Response to a Patronizing Reviewer

“If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half-crushed worm dares call me ‘middlebrow’ I will take my pen and stab him, dead.”

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A Wave in the Mind: Virginia Woolf on Creativity and Consciousness
A Wave in the Mind: Virginia Woolf on Creativity and Consciousness

“A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

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Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty
Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty

A century and a half before our modern fetishism of failure, a seminal philosophical case for its value.

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Tolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of Life
Tolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of Life

Even if one could never “finish” great literature, one has to begin somewhere.

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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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William James on Choosing Purpose Over Profit and the Life-Changing Power of a Great Mentor
William James on Choosing Purpose Over Profit and the Life-Changing Power of a Great Mentor

“After all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together.”

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You Have Never Seen the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe on the Shimmering Beauty of the Southwest
You Have Never Seen the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe on the Shimmering Beauty of the Southwest

“There is something wonderful about the bigness and the lonelyness and the windyness of it all.”

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The Virtuous Cycle of Gratitude and Mutual Appreciation: The Letters of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann
The Virtuous Cycle of Gratitude and Mutual Appreciation: The Letters of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann

“The beautiful exists only in such traces of dream-daring, which a work of art brings with it from its spiritual home.”

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Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities
Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities

“Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least.”

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