Maria Popova – Perspectives

How to tell love from passion – a timeless litmus test [Article]

Maria Popova pulls out this timeless classic by James Thurber & EB White:

“By and large, love is easier to experience before it has been explained — easier and cleaner.”

and another excerpt:

Let us say you have sat down to write a letter to your lady. There has been a normal amount of preparation for the ordeal, such as clearing a space on the desk … and the normal amount of false alarms, such as sitting down and discovering that you have no cigarettes. (Note: if you think you can write the letter without cigarettes, it is not love, it is passion.) Finally you get settled and you write the words; “Anne darling.” If you like commas, you put a comma after “darling”; if you like colons, a colon; if dashes, a dash. If you don’t care what punctuation mark you put after “darling,” the chances are you are in love — although you may just be uneducated, who knows?

Words on Food by a master of both [Article]

Alexander Dumas on the three kinds of hunger, three kinds of gluttony & the perfect number of dinner guests. You won’t be disappointed! [via Brainpickings]

The best way to learn anything [Letters]

Few would disagree that Einstein knew what he was talking about. Maria Popova discovers a letter he wrote his 11 year old son with some advice

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

Don’t Go Back to School: How to Fuel the Internal Engine of Learning [Article]

Maria Popova had a very interesting post recently, on education. Quoting Zack Booth Simpson:

“The best education you can get is just talking with people who are smart…you can get that for the cost of lunch.”

Giving meaning to work [Article]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote “If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment … all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.” Maria Popova shares the wisdom on How to find fulfilling work by the philosopher Roman Krznaric (a prize if you can pronounce that on the first try!)

…The message of the ‘grin and bear it’ school of thought is that we need to accept the inevitable and put up with whatever job we can get, as long as it meets our financial needs and leaves us enough time to pursue our ‘real life’ outside office hours. The best way to protect ourselves from all the optimistic pundits pedaling fulfillment is to develop a hardy philosophy of acceptance, even resignation, and not set our hearts on finding a meaningful career. I am more hopeful than this, and subscribe to a different approach, which is that it is possible to find work that is life-enhancing, that broadens our horizons and makes us feel more human.

Theodor Geisel’s book of art [Artivle]

Theodor Seuss Geisel was well known as Dr. Seuss for his children’s picture books. He wasn’t as well known for his humorous story about n-u-d-i-s-t sisters, as Maria Popova helps us discover in the Atlantic. Take a look through “The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts concerning History’s barest family”.