The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

Control for Surrender: Henry Miller’s Stunning Letter to Anaïs Nin About the Value of and the Antidote to Despair
Control for Surrender: Henry Miller’s Stunning Letter to Anaïs Nin About the Value of and the Antidote to Despair

“When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance.”

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The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on the Art of Noticing and What Artists Can Learn from Naturalists
The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on the Art of Noticing and What Artists Can Learn from Naturalists

“We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its specific features.”

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Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness
Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness

“If you can acknowledge it and you can relax with it a little bit, very often it shortens its duration.”

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What We Keep in Loss: William Blake’s Stirring Letter to a Bereaved Father
What We Keep in Loss: William Blake’s Stirring Letter to a Bereaved Father

“Our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part.”

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What Makes Great Art: The Single Most Important Element in Creative Work
What Makes Great Art: The Single Most Important Element in Creative Work

“Art is a miracle, superior to the laws.”

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How to Keep Life from Becoming a Parody of Itself: Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older
How to Keep Life from Becoming a Parody of Itself: Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older

“In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves.”

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To the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem
To the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem

“The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait.”

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Carrots and the Roots of Kindness, from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy to Ross Gay
Carrots and the Roots of Kindness, from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy to Ross Gay

A lovely reminder that “kindness and kin have the same mother.”

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The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love
The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love

“Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.”

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Keith Haring on Our Resistance to Change, the Dangers of Certainty, and the Root of Creativity
Keith Haring on Our Resistance to Change, the Dangers of Certainty, and the Root of Creativity

“To be a victim of change is to ignore its existence.”

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