The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

Nine Podcasts for a Fuller Life
Nine Podcasts for a Fuller Life

A short playlist of intellectual, creative, and spiritual invigoration.

read article

The Diffusion of Useful Ignorance: Thoreau on the Hubris of Our Knowledge and the Transcendent Humility of Not-Knowing
The Diffusion of Useful Ignorance: Thoreau on the Hubris of Our Knowledge and the Transcendent Humility of Not-Knowing

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.”

read article

The Magic of Moss and What It Teaches Us About the Art of Attentiveness to Life at All Scales
The Magic of Moss and What It Teaches Us About the Art of Attentiveness to Life at All Scales

“Life [exists] only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.”

read article

Simone Weil on How to Make Use of Your Suffering
Simone Weil on How to Make Use of Your Suffering

“To make use … of the sufferings that chance inflicts upon us is better than inflicting discipline upon oneself.”

read article

Einstein, Gödel, and Our Strange Experience of Time: Rebecca Goldstein on How Relativity Rattled the Flow of Existence
Einstein, Gödel, and Our Strange Experience of Time: Rebecca Goldstein on How Relativity Rattled the Flow of Existence

“Is there anything we know more intimately than the fleetingness of time, the transience of each and every moment?”

read article

Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means
Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means

“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.”

read article

Charlotte Brontë on Faith and Atheism
Charlotte Brontë on Faith and Atheism

A specimen from the fossil record of Truth and Reason.

read article

From Dream to Nightmare: John Steinbeck on the Perils of Publicity and the Dark Side of Success
From Dream to Nightmare: John Steinbeck on the Perils of Publicity and the Dark Side of Success

“It is so hard to know anything. So impossible to trust oneself. Even to know what there is to trust.”

read article

Richard Feynman on Science vs. Religion and Why Uncertainty Is Central to Morality
Richard Feynman on Science vs. Religion and Why Uncertainty Is Central to Morality

“It is impossible to find an answer which someday will not be found to be wrong.”

read article

Dante and the Eternal Quest for Nonreligious Divinity: Physicist Margaret Wertheim on Science and God
Dante and the Eternal Quest for Nonreligious Divinity: Physicist Margaret Wertheim on Science and God

“I believe that there is a love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

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.)