The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads from 2015

Paul Goodman on the Nine Kinds of Silence
Paul Goodman on the Nine Kinds of Silence

“There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy… the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul… the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.”

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Some of Today’s Most Prominent Artists on Courage, Creativity, Criticism, Success, and What It Means to Be a Great Artist
Some of Today’s Most Prominent Artists on Courage, Creativity, Criticism, Success, and What It Means to Be a Great Artist

Wisdom from Ai Weiwei, Marina Abramović, Damien Hirst, Laurie Simmons, Carroll Dunham, and more.

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Parents Talk to Their Kids About How Babies Are Made
Parents Talk to Their Kids About How Babies Are Made

Impossibly charming revelations about the biological realities behind the birds and the bees.

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Einstein’s God: Science, Free Will, and the Human Spirit
Einstein’s God: Science, Free Will, and the Human Spirit

“How we ask our questions affects the answers we arrive at… Science and religion… ask different kinds of questions altogether, probing and illuminating in ways neither could alone.”

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Nabokov Gets Food Poisoning and Flees from the Hospital via Fire Escape: History’s Most Entertaining Account of “Homeric Retching”
Nabokov Gets Food Poisoning and Flees from the Hospital via Fire Escape: History’s Most Entertaining Account of “Homeric Retching”

“I returned to my microscope around two. Exactly at 2:30, I suddenly felt an urge to vomit, had barely time to run outside — and there it began.”

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How to Master the Vital Balance of Freedom and Restraint: Young André Gide’s Rules of Conduct
How to Master the Vital Balance of Freedom and Restraint: Young André Gide’s Rules of Conduct

“One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it.”

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Rilke on Winter as the Season for Tending to Your Inner Garden
Rilke on Winter as the Season for Tending to Your Inner Garden

“What does living come down to but bringing about those changes in ourselves … which can free us to enjoy a richness and closeness with everyone?”

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Thea’s Tree: An Illustrated Ode to Daydreaming, the Passage of Time, and the Gift of Human Imagination
Thea’s Tree: An Illustrated Ode to Daydreaming, the Passage of Time, and the Gift of Human Imagination

“Go plant this seed… And give it water and love and conversation.”

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Compassion and the Real Meaning of the Golden Rule
Compassion and the Real Meaning of the Golden Rule

“Compassion… asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”

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A Classical Guitarist’s Assuring Account of Creative Homecoming and Overcoming Impostor Syndrome
A Classical Guitarist’s Assuring Account of Creative Homecoming and Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

“When you sit down to practice, however casually, you cast yourself as the hero and victim of your own myth.”

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