The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “psychology”

Thomas Carlyle on What Self-Help Really Means and the Healing Power of Love in Moments of Blackest Despair
Thomas Carlyle on What Self-Help Really Means and the Healing Power of Love in Moments of Blackest Despair

“The feeling of recklessness and stormy self-help, when friends grow cold, and the world seems to cast us off, and the heart gathers force from its own wretchedness, converting its ‘tortures into horrid arms.’ There is strength here and dignity…”

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Rilke on Inspiration and the Combinatorial Nature of Creativity
Rilke on Inspiration and the Combinatorial Nature of Creativity

“One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others… One must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window…”

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Happiness as a Moral Obligation
Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Happiness as a Moral Obligation

“It is well to fly towards the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of wings against the windowpanes, is it not?”

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An Evolutionary Anatomy of Affect: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on How and Why We Feel What We Feel
An Evolutionary Anatomy of Affect: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on How and Why We Feel What We Feel

“How and what we create culturally and how we react to cultural phenomena depend on the tricks of our imperfect memories as manipulated by feelings.”

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A Placid Ecstasy: Walt Whitman’s Most Direct Reflection on Happiness
A Placid Ecstasy: Walt Whitman’s Most Direct Reflection on Happiness

“What is happiness, anyhow? … so impalpable — a mere breath, an evanescent tinge…”

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The Paradox of Freedom: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Moral Aloneness and Our Mightiest Antidote to Terror
The Paradox of Freedom: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Moral Aloneness and Our Mightiest Antidote to Terror

“Modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine.”

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Zadie Smith on What Writers Can Learn from Some of History’s Greatest Dancers
Zadie Smith on What Writers Can Learn from Some of History’s Greatest Dancers

“Between propriety and joy choose joy.”

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A Burst of Light: Audre Lorde on Turning Fear Into Fire
A Burst of Light: Audre Lorde on Turning Fear Into Fire

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

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The Continuous Thread of Revelation: Eudora Welty on Writing, Time, and Embracing the Nonlinearity of How We Become Who We Are
The Continuous Thread of Revelation: Eudora Welty on Writing, Time, and Embracing the Nonlinearity of How We Become Who We Are

“Greater than scene… is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.”

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Nietzsche on Depression and the Rehabilitation of Hope
Nietzsche on Depression and the Rehabilitation of Hope

In praise of “the rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,… of impending adventures, of seas that are open again.”

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