The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “letters”

Iris Murdoch on Love and Chance
Iris Murdoch on Love and Chance

“Everything that is important and valuable and good belongs with the little piece of us which is not mechanical.”

read article

John Keats’s Exquisite Love Letter to Fanny Brawne
John Keats’s Exquisite Love Letter to Fanny Brawne

“Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.”

read article

Lou Andreas-Salomé, the World’s First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Creativity and the Relationship Between the Mind and the Body, in Letters to Rilke
Lou Andreas-Salomé, the World’s First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Creativity and the Relationship Between the Mind and the Body, in Letters to Rilke

“All art begins [as] a calling forth of life in its still concealed mysteriousness.”

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

Mendelssohn on Creative Integrity and the Highest Satisfaction for the Artist
Mendelssohn on Creative Integrity and the Highest Satisfaction for the Artist

“When I have composed a piece just as it sprang from my heart, then I have done my duty towards it; and whether it brings hereafter fame, honor, decorations, or snuff-boxes, etc., is a matter of indifference to me.”

read article

W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter
W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter

“Be honest, frank and fearless and get some grasp of the real values of life… Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.”

read article

Seneca on Overcoming Fear and the Surest Strategy for Protecting Yourself from Misfortune
Seneca on Overcoming Fear and the Surest Strategy for Protecting Yourself from Misfortune

“If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”

read article

Charles Darwin’s Touching Letter of Appreciation to His Best Friend and Greatest Champion
Charles Darwin’s Touching Letter of Appreciation to His Best Friend and Greatest Champion

“You are the one living soul from whom I have constantly received sympathy… I never forget for even a minute how much assistance I have received from you.”

read article

Elizabeth Bishop on Why Everyone Should Experience at Least One Long Period of Solitude in Life
Elizabeth Bishop on Why Everyone Should Experience at Least One Long Period of Solitude in Life

Wisdom on the rhythms of creativity from a lighthouse daydream.

read article

James Joyce’s Love Letters
James Joyce’s Love Letters

“If I am to write anything fine or noble in the future I shall do so only by listening at the doors of your heart.”

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.)