Reads tagged with “letters”
Van Gogh on the Beauty of Sorrow and the Enchantment of Storms, in Nature and in Life
“Oh, there must be a little bit of air, a little bit of happiness, but chiefly to let the form be felt, to make the lines of the silhouette speak. But let the whole be sombre.”
Pioneering Feminist Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft on Loneliness, Friendship, and the Courage of Unwavering Affection
“Friendship… requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.”
A Flash of Illumination on the Greyhound Bus: Physicist Freeman Dyson on Creative Breakthrough and the Unconscious Mind
“It is strange the way ideas come when they are needed.”
Egon Schiele on What It Means to Be an Artist and Why Visionaries Always Come from the Minority
“Envy those who see beauty in everything in the world.”
The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor
In praise of the “loving sympathy” that makes life worthy of living.
Loneliness in Time: Physicist Freeman Dyson on Immigration and How Severing Our Connection to the Past Shallows Our Present and Hollows Our History
An antidote to today’s perilous self-expatriation from history.
Seneca on Gratitude and What It Really Means to Be a Generous Human Being
“I am grateful, not in order that my neighbour, provoked by the earlier act of kindness, may be more ready to benefit me, but simply in order that I may perform a most pleasant and beautiful act.”
Rilke on the Lonely Patience of Creative Work
“Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them.”
Thomas Carlyle on What Self-Help Really Means and the Healing Power of Love in Moments of Blackest Despair
“The feeling of recklessness and stormy self-help, when friends grow cold, and the world seems to cast us off, and the heart gathers force from its own wretchedness, converting its ‘tortures into horrid arms.’ There is strength here and dignity…”
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