The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Blind Spots of Sympathy
Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Blind Spots of Sympathy

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others… There is a virgin forest in each.”

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What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity
What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity

“Creation is a delicate and experimental thing… Knowledge and effective action here become one gesture; the gesture of understanding the world and changing it.”

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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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The Poetry of Science and Wonder as an Antidote to Self-Destruction: Rachel Carson’s Magnificent 1952 National Book Award Acceptance Speech
The Poetry of Science and Wonder as an Antidote to Self-Destruction: Rachel Carson’s Magnificent 1952 National Book Award Acceptance Speech

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that… is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction… There can be no separate literature of science.”

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The Art of Receiving: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning of Gratitude
The Art of Receiving: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning of Gratitude

“It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness.”

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What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone
What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone

“The moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity.”

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Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves
Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves

“Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.”

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The Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention
The Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention

“An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer.”

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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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Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it… It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our ‘self.’”

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