Reads by Maria Popova
Having It Out with Melancholy: Amanda Palmer Reads Jane Kenyon’s Stunning Poem About Living to the Other Side of Depression
“What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?”
On Saying “I Love You” Only When You Mean It: Robert Browning on Protecting the Sincerity of Sentiment from Desecration by Misuse
“People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning.”
Caitlin Moran on Fighting the Cowardice of Cynicism
“When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas.”
Take Fate by the Throat: Beethoven on Creative Vitality and Resilience in the Face of Suffering
“Day by day I am approaching the goal which I apprehend but cannot describe.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the Dangerous Myth of the Suffering Artist and What Makes Life Worth Living
A beautiful clarion call for making creative work “the filling joy of your life” no matter how difficult the cards you’ve been dealt.
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”
The Art of Living with Wide-Open Consciousness: Alice James on Attentiveness as the Pulse-Beat of Art
“There are some people… who drive everywhere and admire nothing.”
Rachel Carson on Science and Our Spiritual Bond with Nature
“Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.”
The Search for a New Humility: Václav Havel on Reclaiming Our Human Interconnectedness in a Globalized Yet Divided World
“Our respect for other people… can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it… and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of being.”
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