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Vincent van Gogh quote art history motivation culture and society letters lit art art and design history and literature

However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth… steps in and does something.

Vincent van Gogh, born on this day in 1853, on fear, risk, and what propels us forward in life.

Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera love letters letters love quote culture art art history women in art

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera 90 years ago today. Her gorgeous handwritten love letters to him.

Emily Dickinson love letters poetry lit history and literature love LGBT history LGBT women's history biography letters

Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to?… I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you… feel that now I must have you… Why, Susie, it seems to me as if my absent Lover was coming home so soon — and my heart must be so busy, making ready for him.

Emily Dickinson’s electric love letters to Susan Gilbert.

Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne lit history and literature Figuring LGBT history love letters letters history

Your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s… The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds.

Moby-Dick author Herman Melville’s little-known, passionate, beautiful, heartbreaking love letters to his literary hero and neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Sherwood Anderson lit letters art advice thought and opinion Father's Day history and literature

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself… Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live.

On Fathers Day, the beautiful letter of advice on art and life Sherwood Anderson sent to his young son when he left home to be an artist.

Johannes Brahms music letters history and literature lit love letters

I would gladly write to you only by means of music, but I have things to say to you to-day which music could not express.

Johannes Brahms was born on this day in 1833. His stunning letters to Clara Schumann – a love that transcends label and category.

Amelia Earhart women's history advice aviation letters thought and opinion culture and society

Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Atlantic on this day in 1937 and left, in a letter to her sister, her timeless advice on sticking up for yourself.

Jack Kerouac lit letters philosophy thought and opinion history and literature culture and society

Jack Kerouac, who would’ve been 95 today, on kindness, the Self illusion, and the “Golden Eternity” – absolutely beautiful letter to his first wife, with whom he remained lifelong friends.

Franz Kafka lit history and literature letters thought and opinion

Kafka’s beautiful letter to his childhood friend about how books transform us.

Bruce Lee letters culture and society

Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are too busy in wasting their vital creative energy to project themselves as this or that, dedicating their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like rather than actualizing their potentiality as a human being.

Bruce Lee’s never-before-revealed letters to himself about the measure of success and what it means to live an authentic life, written shortly before his death.

W.E.B. Bu Bois Black History Month letters advice culture and society thought and opinion

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.

For W.E.B. Bu Bois’s birthday, his magnificent letter of life-advice to his teenage daughter.

politics protest Bernie Sanders art and design arts funding arts National Endowment for the Arts Donald Trump letters lit

Enormously important, unprecedented letter to the President from 24 United States Senators, including Bernie Sanders, outlining how defunding the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities – which is Trump’s plan – will assault creative culture and the very fabric of American society.

Since its inception in 1965, the NEA alone has given away $46 million in grants to writers. For a writer, an NEA grant can make the difference between taking a year off to complete a book and toiling at a day job. It isn’t hard to imagine that without these grants, some of the most important writers of the past half-century may have never published the works for which they are now beloved. (Among them was Audre Lorde, who spoke up passionately for the importance of arts funding.)

Letter scans courtesy of the Academy of American Poets, who organized the initiative.

Laura Riding letters advice lit history and literature thought and opinion culture and society

People who for some reason find it impossible to think about themselves, and so really be themselves, try to make up for not thinking with doing.

The poet Laura Riding’s remarkable 1930 letters of advice to an 8-year-old girl are full of timeless wisdom on life and creative work, partway between Rilke’s Letters to a Young Artist and the Zen teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Alan Turing tech letters science and technology history and literature spirituality thought and opinion mortality death loss

The Binary Code of Body and Spirit – computing pioneer Alan Turing on mortality.

Darwin Day love letters Charles Darwin science and technology science lit history and literature letters

I feel in my inmost heart your admirable qualities & feelings & all I would hope is that you might direct them upwards.

On Darwin Day, Emma Darwin’s stirring love letter to Charles Darwin.