The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “culture”

The Only Story in the World: John Steinbeck on Kindness, Good and Evil, the Wellspring of Good Writing
The Only Story in the World: John Steinbeck on Kindness, Good and Evil, the Wellspring of Good Writing

“Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.”

read article

Philosopher Martin Buber on How Learning to Look at Trees Teaches Us to See Each Other More Clearly
Philosopher Martin Buber on How Learning to Look at Trees Teaches Us to See Each Other More Clearly

“Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.”

read article

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The Untold Story of Cryptography Pioneer Elizebeth Friedman
The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The Untold Story of Cryptography Pioneer Elizebeth Friedman

How an unsung heroine established a new field of science and helped defeat the Nazis with pencil, paper, and perseverance.

read article

The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love: Rilke on Freedom, Togetherness, and the Secret to a Good Marriage
The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love: Rilke on Freedom, Togetherness, and the Secret to a Good Marriage

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”

read article

Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful and Humanistic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful and Humanistic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

“There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance…”

read article

Walt Whitman on Creativity
Walt Whitman on Creativity

Wisdom “for strong artists and leaders — for fresh broods of teachers… and coming musicians.”

read article

Toni Morrison on the Deepest Meaning of Freedom
Toni Morrison on the Deepest Meaning of Freedom

In praise of loving anything and anyone you choose to love.

read article

Jeanette Winterson’s 10 Tips on Writing
Jeanette Winterson’s 10 Tips on Writing

“Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.”

read article

What We Imagine Knowledge to Be: James Gleick Reads Elizabeth Bishop
What We Imagine Knowledge to Be: James Gleick Reads Elizabeth Bishop

“If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world…”

read article

Water: A Stunning Celebration of the Element of Life Based on Indian Folklore
Water: A Stunning Celebration of the Element of Life Based on Indian Folklore

“We need nature — water, sun, air — to survive, but she doesn’t really need us. She is generous to us, but she has some conditions, and we have to respect them.”

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.)