The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

The Definitive Manifesto for Handling Haters: Anne Lamott on Priorities and How We Keep Ourselves Small by People-Pleasing
The Definitive Manifesto for Handling Haters: Anne Lamott on Priorities and How We Keep Ourselves Small by People-Pleasing

“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65… and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?”

read article

E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to a Man Who Had Lost Faith in Humanity
E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to a Man Who Had Lost Faith in Humanity

What sailors teach us about hope and the resilience of the human spirit.

read article

Kierkegaard on Our Greatest Source of Unhappiness
Kierkegaard on Our Greatest Source of Unhappiness

“Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy.”

read article

George Saunders on the Power of Kindness, Animated
George Saunders on the Power of Kindness, Animated

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”

read article

Love Undetectable: Andrew Sullivan on the Superior Rewards of Friendship in a World Obsessed with Romance
Love Undetectable: Andrew Sullivan on the Superior Rewards of Friendship in a World Obsessed with Romance

Reflections on the cornerstone of our flourishing.

read article

Joyce Carol Oates on Consciousness, Wonder, and the Art of Beholding Beauty
Joyce Carol Oates on Consciousness, Wonder, and the Art of Beholding Beauty

“How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.”

read article

Picasso on Success and Why You Should Never Compromise in Creative Work
Picasso on Success and Why You Should Never Compromise in Creative Work

“One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation.”

read article

Perseverance, Self-Transcendence, and the “Slow Churn” of Creativity: A Conversation with Artist Rachel Sussman
Perseverance, Self-Transcendence, and the “Slow Churn” of Creativity: A Conversation with Artist Rachel Sussman

How deep time puts our fleeting human lives in perspective, what it takes to persist, and why any meaningful creative endeavor requires sacrifice.

read article

The Dark Side of Certainty: Jacob Bronowski on the Spirit of Science and What Auschwitz Teaches Us About Our Compulsion for Control
The Dark Side of Certainty: Jacob Bronowski on the Spirit of Science and What Auschwitz Teaches Us About Our Compulsion for Control

“Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible… We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power.”

read article

Susan Sontag on Beauty vs. Interestingness
Susan Sontag on Beauty vs. Interestingness

Defying consumerism and the banality of the beautiful, or why our capacity for astonishment endures.

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.)