The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

Leo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World
Leo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World

“For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.”

read article

Astronomy and the Art of Verse: How Galileo Influenced Shakespeare
Astronomy and the Art of Verse: How Galileo Influenced Shakespeare

A stanzaic vision for Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings.

read article

Alan Watts on Money vs. Wealth
Alan Watts on Money vs. Wealth

“The moral challenge and the grim problem we face is that the life of affluence and pleasure requires exact discipline and high imagination.”

read article

Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life
Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life

“Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.”

read article

The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine: Donald Barthelme’s Irreverent Vintage Children’s Book
The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine: Donald Barthelme’s Irreverent Vintage Children’s Book

“Mysteries are not to be avoided. Rather they are a locus of hope, they enrich and complicate. That is why we have them.”

read article

Kandinsky on the Spiritual Element in Art and the Three Responsibilities of Artists
Kandinsky on the Spiritual Element in Art and the Three Responsibilities of Artists

“To harmonize the whole is the task of art.”

read article

The Art of Neil Gaiman
The Art of Neil Gaiman

Irreverent self-portraits, naughty love letters, and other ephemera of a wildly creative mind at work.

read article

A Brief History of the Toilet
A Brief History of the Toilet

How the most appropriately named inventor in history saved humanity from a centuries-long crisis.

read article

Discipline, Quality vs. Quantity, and the Power of Intellectual Elegance: Remembering Massimo Vignelli
Discipline, Quality vs. Quantity, and the Power of Intellectual Elegance: Remembering Massimo Vignelli

“Quality stems from intellectual elegance, and is precluded from the vulgar mind.”

read article

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams on How Your Choices Shape the World, Animated
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams on How Your Choices Shape the World, Animated

“Every single thing you do is politics, because the interaction of human beings is politics writ large.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)