The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads from 2015

The Art of Not-Having-to-Ask, from Buddhist Monks to Amanda Palmer by Way of Thoreau
The Art of Not-Having-to-Ask, from Buddhist Monks to Amanda Palmer by Way of Thoreau

How to unlearn everything our transactionalist culture has taught us about “the market” and relearn our natural open-handed generosity.

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Mary Oliver on Love and Its Necessary Wildness
Mary Oliver on Love and Its Necessary Wildness

In praise of the “invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable.”

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Physicist Lisa Randall on the Sublime and the Crucial Differences Between How Art, Science, and Religion Explain the Universe
Physicist Lisa Randall on the Sublime and the Crucial Differences Between How Art, Science, and Religion Explain the Universe

“The universe is humbling. Nature hides many of its most interesting mysteries.”

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Patti Smith on Time, Transformation, and How the Radiance of Love Redeems the Rupture of Loss
Patti Smith on Time, Transformation, and How the Radiance of Love Redeems the Rupture of Loss

“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”

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Trailblazing Astronomer Vera Rubin on Obsessiveness, Minimizing Obstacles, and How the Thrill of Accidental Discovery Redeems the Terror of Uncertainty
Trailblazing Astronomer Vera Rubin on Obsessiveness, Minimizing Obstacles, and How the Thrill of Accidental Discovery Redeems the Terror of Uncertainty

Why all creative endeavor is a matter of “getting hung up on little interesting things.”

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Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation
Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.”

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John Dewey on How to Find Your Calling, the Key to a Fulfilling Vocation, and Why Diverse Interests Are Essential for Excellence in Any Field
John Dewey on How to Find Your Calling, the Key to a Fulfilling Vocation, and Why Diverse Interests Are Essential for Excellence in Any Field

“To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness.”

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Harry Clarke’s Beautiful and Haunting 1925 Illustrations for Goethe’s Faust
Harry Clarke’s Beautiful and Haunting 1925 Illustrations for Goethe’s Faust

“Part of that power which would do evil constantly and constantly does good.”

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How Do We Know What We Want: Milan Kundera on the Central Ambivalences of Life and Love
How Do We Know What We Want: Milan Kundera on the Central Ambivalences of Life and Love

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come… We live everything as it comes, without warning.”

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Nietzsche on the Journey of Becoming and What It Means to Be a Free Spirit
Nietzsche on the Journey of Becoming and What It Means to Be a Free Spirit

“…become master over yourself, master of your own good qualities… acquire power over your aye and no and learn to hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims…”

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