The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “diaries”

The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald: An Endearing Record of His First Loves from His Secret Boyhood Diary
The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald: An Endearing Record of His First Loves from His Secret Boyhood Diary

A lesson on self-awareness without self-consciousness.

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Henry James on Memory, Growing Older, and What Happiness Really Means
Henry James on Memory, Growing Older, and What Happiness Really Means

“I have led too serious a life; but that perhaps, after all, preserves one’s youth.”

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Hans Christian Andersen’s Little-Known Sketches: The Beloved Storyteller’s Illustrated Travelogue of Europe
Hans Christian Andersen’s Little-Known Sketches: The Beloved Storyteller’s Illustrated Travelogue of Europe

What made Andersen particularly enchanting was his singular gift for noticing and depicting not only the whimsical, but also the wistful.

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Anaïs Nin on the Elusive Nature of Joy
Anaïs Nin on the Elusive Nature of Joy

“There are so many joys, but I have only known the ones that come like a miracle, touching everything with light.”

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How to Watch the Un-sunlike Sun: Solar Eclipse Tips from Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell
How to Watch the Un-sunlike Sun: Solar Eclipse Tips from Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell

“It is always difficult to teach the man of the people that natural phenomena belong as much to him as to scientific people.”

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Party Like It’s 1903: Virginia Woolf on the Ecstasy of Music and Dance
Party Like It’s 1903: Virginia Woolf on the Ecstasy of Music and Dance

“Dance music… stirs some barbaric instinct — lulled asleep in our sober lives — you forget centuries of civilization in a second.”

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Teenage Virginia Woolf on the Human Mind
Teenage Virginia Woolf on the Human Mind

“Activity of mind … is the only thing that keeps one’s life going.”

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George Orwell, Feminist: The Beloved Author on Gender Equality in Work and Housework
George Orwell, Feminist: The Beloved Author on Gender Equality in Work and Housework

“The position now-a-days is anomalous. The man is practically always out of work, whereas the woman occasionally is working. Yet the woman continues to do all the housework.”

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Albert Camus on Happiness, Unhappiness, and Our Self-Imposed Prisons
Albert Camus on Happiness, Unhappiness, and Our Self-Imposed Prisons

“Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.”

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A Very Large Head: The Phrenology of George Eliot
A Very Large Head: The Phrenology of George Eliot

“She is extremely feminine & gentle; & the great strength of her intellect combined with this quality renders her very interesting.”

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