The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads by Maria Popova

The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living

“The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.”

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Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism

“Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.”

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Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe

How to bear the gravity of being.

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The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance

The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.

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Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired Hilma af Klint
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired Hilma af Klint

Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.

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The Art of Human Connection: Pioneering Psychologist and Philosopher William James on the Most Important Attitude for Relationships
The Art of Human Connection: Pioneering Psychologist and Philosopher William James on the Most Important Attitude for Relationships

“Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer.”

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How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods

The art-science that captured the wonder of some of “the most brilliant productions of Nature.”

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Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality

How to “include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border.”

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Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life

“We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?”

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May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone

“The people we love are built into us.”

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