Letters to a Prime Minister
Every two weeks, from 2007 to 2011, Yann Martel sent a book to then Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. Each book was accompanied by a letter telling the PM why he might enjoy that particular …
Letters
Roald Dahl’s Heartbreaking Letter About Losing his Daughter in 1962
Roald Dahl, the beloved author of my personal favorites Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG, lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in the early 60s. It wasn’t until 1988, …
Vincent van Gogh on Why Never Learning How to Paint Helped
In a letter to his brother Theo, dated September 1882, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, Vincent van Gogh describes the advantages of never learning to paint. While making it I said to …
Albert Einstein on Education and the Secret to Learning
In 1915 Einstein, who was then 36, was living in wartime Berlin with his cousin Elsa, who would eventually become his second wife. His two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard “Tete” Einstein were …
Vincent van Gogh Writes a Letter on the Three Stages of Love
In a letter to his brother Theo, dated Thursday, 3 November 1881, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, Vincent van Gogh describes an unreciprocated love and in so doing alludes to three stages …
Vincent van Gogh on the Two Types of Idlers
The anthology Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, contains 265 of Vincent van Gogh’s letters, which is nearly a third of all the surviving letters he penned. In a long and winding letter to his brother …
Vincent van Gogh on How To Live
Van Gogh didn’t become popular until shortly after his death. To this day it’s unclear whether his letters drove the initial interest in his art. The anthology Ever Yours: The Essential …
Albert Einstein to Marie Curie: Haters Gonna Hate
“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” — Marie Curie *** “Few persons contributed more to the general welfare of mankind and to the advancement of science …
Charles Darwin — Natural Selection was like Confessing a Murder
On this day in 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. In Letters of Note we find an interesting letter from him to Joseph Hooker 15 years before what would later be …
Charles Dickens to The Times — I Stand Astounded and Appalled
On November 13, 1849 a crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside a prison in South London to witness the public execution of Marie and Frederick Manning. Marie and Frederick, a married couple, had …
John Steinbeck on Love
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968) is best known as the author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men but we can pull from his letters a mix of insight and language that rivals that of …
E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to Someone Who Lost Faith in Humanity
In March of 1973, a Mr. Nadeau sent a letter to E. B. White, the author of greats such as Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, expressing his bleak hope for humanity. White’s beautiful …
Seneca on The One Thing Nature Loans us That we Cannot Repay
The Roman philosopher Seneca weaved beautiful and timeless insights into his letters. Luckily a lot of those letters survived. While old, there is a reason we still read them today. While the language …
John Keats on the Quality That Formed a Man of Achievement: Negative Capability
John Keats coined the term negative capability to describe the willingness to embrace uncertainty, mysteries and doubts. The first and only time Keats used the phrase was in a letter on 21 December …
Richard Feynman’s Letter on What Problems to Solve
“No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.” *** In a letter dated February 3rd, 1966, included in the wonderful anthology Perfectly Reasonable …
Charles Bukowski: An Argument Against Censorship
In 1985, staff at a public library, acting on a complaint, decided to to remove Charles Bukowski’s 1983 collection of short stories, Tales of Ordinary Madness, from their shelves. They declared the …