The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads by Maria Popova

The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself

“What is happiness but growth in peace.”

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Václav Havel on How to Hold Your Failure
Václav Havel on How to Hold Your Failure

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George Saunders on the Antidote to Regret
George Saunders on the Antidote to Regret

“At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me.”

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How to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself
How to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself

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Kafka’s Approach to Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gifts
Kafka’s Approach to Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gifts

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A General Theory of Possibility: The Abstract Art of Otherwise and the Physics of Resilience
A General Theory of Possibility: The Abstract Art of Otherwise and the Physics of Resilience

“As always happens with contradictions, something in the assumptions has to give… Declaring something impossible leads to more things being possible.”

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The Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree
The Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree

“It was the great and eternal made visible: a confluence of opposites, their fusing together in the fire of reality. It meant nothing… or, rather, it meant everything… and it was beautiful, it was happiness and meaning… like an earful of Bach or an eyeful of Cézanne.”

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Brian Eno’s Remedy for Burnout and Despair
Brian Eno’s Remedy for Burnout and Despair

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Unselfing into Oneness with the All: The Forgotten Visionary Margaret Fuller on Transcendence
Unselfing into Oneness with the All: The Forgotten Visionary Margaret Fuller on Transcendence

“How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it?”

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Pioneering Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
Pioneering Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship

“A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us.”

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