Reads by Maria Popova

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

“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

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 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

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

“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

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

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

“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

“The people we love are built into us.”

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Reads by Maria Popova

“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.”

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

How to bear the gravity of being.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The people we love are built into us.”

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