The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “keeping a diary”

Two Hundred Years of Blue
Two Hundred Years of Blue

Cerulean splendor from Goethe, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Rachel Carson, Toni Morrison, and other literary masters.

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Thoreau on Knowing vs. Seeing and What It Takes to Apprehend Reality Unblinded by Our Preconceptions
Thoreau on Knowing vs. Seeing and What It Takes to Apprehend Reality Unblinded by Our Preconceptions

“We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”

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A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating Century-Old Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want
A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating Century-Old Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want

“I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.”

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Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living
Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living

“It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it.”

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Virginia Woolf on the Relationship Between Loneliness and Creativity
Virginia Woolf on the Relationship Between Loneliness and Creativity

“If I could catch the feeling, I would; the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.”

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Darkness in the Celestial Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf’s Arresting 1927 Account of a Total Solar Eclipse
Darkness in the Celestial Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf’s Arresting 1927 Account of a Total Solar Eclipse

“We had seen the world dead. This was within the power of nature.”

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A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season
A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

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Thoreau on Writing and the Splendors of Mystery in an Age of Knowledge
Thoreau on Writing and the Splendors of Mystery in an Age of Knowledge

“Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed.”

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The Death of a Tree: Eulogy for Friend
The Death of a Tree: Eulogy for Friend

“It is worse than boorish, it is criminal, to inflict an unnecessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance.”

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Leo Tolstoy, Shortly Before His Death, on Love, Reason, Human Nature, and What Gives Meaning to Our Lives
Leo Tolstoy, Shortly Before His Death, on Love, Reason, Human Nature, and What Gives Meaning to Our Lives

“Reason and love define the demands of human nature… The demands of reason and love must not be subordinated to the demands of habit.”

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