Every month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For two decades, it has remained free, ad-free, AI-free, fully human and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If it makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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Reads by Maria Popova

The Power of a Thin Skin

“To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice.”

read article

20 Ways of Surfacing from the Blues: Sydney Smith’s 200-year-old Strategies for Raising Low Spirits in a Letter of Advice to a 13-year-old Girl

read article

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it… It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our ‘self.’”

read article

Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain

“Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready; our usual frames of reference don’t fit.”

read article

Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife

Where the hard edge of physics meets the vulnerable metaphysics of the human heart.

read article

Thich Nhat Hanh on the Art of Deep Listening and the 3 Buddhist Steps to Repairing a Relationship

“The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible.”

read article

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.”

read article

The Pain in You and the God in You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and Creativity

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donating = loving

Monthly donation

♥ $3 / month

♥ $5 / month

♥ $7 / month

♥ $10 / month

♥ $25 / month

START NOW

One-time donation

You can also become a spontaneous supporter with a one-time donation in any amount:

GIVE NOW

BITCOIN DONATION

Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7

CANCEL MONTHLY SUPPORT

Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your support for as long as it lasted.) You can do so on this page.

Reads by Maria Popova

The Power of a Thin Skin

“To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice.”

20 Ways of Surfacing from the Blues: Sydney Smith’s 200-year-old Strategies for Raising Low Spirits in a Letter of Advice to a 13-year-old Girl

The Souls of Animals

Hermann Hesse on How to Read a Book and How to Read Yourself

Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it… It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our ‘self.’”

Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain

“Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready; our usual frames of reference don’t fit.”

Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife

Where the hard edge of physics meets the vulnerable metaphysics of the human heart.

Thich Nhat Hanh on the Art of Deep Listening and the 3 Buddhist Steps to Repairing a Relationship

“The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible.”

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 Pain in You and the God in You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and Creativity

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Reads by Maria Popova

“To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice.”

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it… It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our ‘self.’”

“Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready; our usual frames of reference don’t fit.”

Where the hard edge of physics meets the vulnerable metaphysics of the human heart.

“The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible.”

“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.”

View Full Site