The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “Thoreau”

10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings
10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings

Fluid reflections on keeping a solid center.

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How Libraries Save Lives
How Libraries Save Lives

One woman’s story of how a bookmobile transported her away from a deadly life and toward her human potential.

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The New Better Off: Courtney Martin on Reimagining Our Ethos of Success and Reclaiming Our Sense of “Enough”
The New Better Off: Courtney Martin on Reimagining Our Ethos of Success and Reclaiming Our Sense of “Enough”

“That’s the thing about success… it’s only satisfying if it’s defined by you and influenced most deeply by the people you love and trust.”

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Eudora Welty on Friendship as an Evolutionary Mechanism for Language
Eudora Welty on Friendship as an Evolutionary Mechanism for Language

“When we learned to speak to, and listen to, rather than to strike or be struck by, our fellow human beings, we found something worth keeping alive, worth possessing, for the rest of time.”

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A Benediction on the World: Wendell Berry on Creaturely Joy
A Benediction on the World: Wendell Berry on Creaturely Joy

“The joy, less deniable in its evidence than the peacefulness, is the confirmation of it.”

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The Death of a Tree: Eulogy for Friend
The Death of a Tree: Eulogy for Friend

“It is worse than boorish, it is criminal, to inflict an unnecessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance.”

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The Power Paradox: The Surprising and Sobering Science of How We Gain and Lose Influence
The Power Paradox: The Surprising and Sobering Science of How We Gain and Lose Influence

“We rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst.”

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The Sound of Silence: An Illustrated Serenade to the Art of Listening to Your Inner Voice Amid the Noise of Modern Life
The Sound of Silence: An Illustrated Serenade to the Art of Listening to Your Inner Voice Amid the Noise of Modern Life

A tender reminder that silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of an inward-listening awareness.

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Neil Gaiman on Why We Read and What Books Do for the Human Experience
Neil Gaiman on Why We Read and What Books Do for the Human Experience

“Truth is not in what happens but in what it tells us about who we are.”

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Henry Beston on Happiness, Simplicity, and the Sacredness of Smallness
Henry Beston on Happiness, Simplicity, and the Sacredness of Smallness

“The emotions have … their own sense of scale. In the emotional world a small thing can touch the heart and the imagination every bit as much as something impressively gigantic.”

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