The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of Candid Connection
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of Candid Connection

“We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship.”

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Dostoyevsky on Animal Rights and the Deepest Meaning of Human Love
Dostoyevsky on Animal Rights and the Deepest Meaning of Human Love

“Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.”

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Favorite Books of 2022
Favorite Books of 2022

From Rumi to Blake to Nick Cave, by way of trees, hummingbirds, grief, and music.

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The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature
The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature

“Mind is invisible nature, while nature is visible mind.”

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Virginia Woolf on the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater and the Remedy for Self-Doubt
Virginia Woolf on the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater and the Remedy for Self-Doubt

“One must face the despicable vanity which is at the root of all this niggling and haggling.”

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Thoreau on Living Through Loss
Thoreau on Living Through Loss

“Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident.”

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Symbiosis and the Unself: Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth
Symbiosis and the Unself: Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth

“Living beings defy neat definition… We abide in a symbiotic world.”

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Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge
Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge

“There are ways of failing in solitude as in society.”

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Apple Meditation: John Burroughs on the Portable Philosophy of Humanity’s Favorite Fruit
Apple Meditation: John Burroughs on the Portable Philosophy of Humanity’s Favorite Fruit

“I think if I could subsist on you… I should never have an intemperate or ignoble thought, never he feverish or despondent… I should be cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmths and contentment around.”

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In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books
In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books

A love-poem to those folds in spacetime that take us back to “when Sappho was a living girl.”

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