The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses
An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses

“The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

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Underland: An Enchanting Journey into the Hidden Universe Beneath Our Feet
Underland: An Enchanting Journey into the Hidden Universe Beneath Our Feet

“Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.”

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Meditations on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp: Polish Painter Józef Czapski on Literature, Survival, and the Human Soul
Meditations on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp: Polish Painter Józef Czapski on Literature, Survival, and the Human Soul

“The slow and painful transformation of a passionate and narrowly egotistical being into a man who gives himself over wholly to some great work or other that devours him, destroys him, lives in his blood, is a trial every creative being must endure.”

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Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind
Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind

“One may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one’s own life and environment beautiful, so far as one’s power reaches. This includes moral beauty.”

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Virginia Woolf on Being Ill as a Portal to Self-Understanding
Virginia Woolf on Being Ill as a Portal to Self-Understanding

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings… it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

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How to Find Your Artistic Voice: Ben Folds on Empathy, Creativity, and the Courage to Know Yourself
How to Find Your Artistic Voice: Ben Folds on Empathy, Creativity, and the Courage to Know Yourself

“What an artist has to offer is obvious to just about anyone else but the artist him- or herself.”

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Eating the Sun: A Lovely Illustrated Celebration of Wonder, the Science of How the Universe Works, and the Existential Mystery of Being Human
Eating the Sun: A Lovely Illustrated Celebration of Wonder, the Science of How the Universe Works, and the Existential Mystery of Being Human

“When one is considering the universe, unseen matter, our small backyard of the stuff, I think it is important, sensible even, to try and find some balance between laughter and uncontrollable weeping.”

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Keats on the Measure of Compassion
Keats on the Measure of Compassion

“The best of Men have… a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames which creates the ferment of existence — by which a Man is propell’d to act and strive and buffet with Circumstance.”

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Marcus Aurelius on Embracing Mortality and the Key to Living with Presence
Marcus Aurelius on Embracing Mortality and the Key to Living with Presence

“The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.”

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Visionary Photographer Edward Weston on the Importance of Cross-Disciplinary Curiosity in Creative Work
Visionary Photographer Edward Weston on the Importance of Cross-Disciplinary Curiosity in Creative Work

“In this age of communication… who can be free from influence, — preconception? But — it all depends upon what one does with this cross-fertilization: — is it digested, or does it bring indigestion?”

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