The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “psychology”

David Whyte on Vulnerability, Presence, and How Surrendering to the Uncontrollable Magnifies Your Life
David Whyte on Vulnerability, Presence, and How Surrendering to the Uncontrollable Magnifies Your Life

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

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Erich Fromm on Human Nature, the Common Laziness of Optimism and Pessimism, and Why We Need Rational Faith in the Human Spirit
Erich Fromm on Human Nature, the Common Laziness of Optimism and Pessimism, and Why We Need Rational Faith in the Human Spirit

“Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair… To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible.”

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Susan Sontag on Selfies, Selfhood, and How the Camera Helps Us Navigate Complexity
Susan Sontag on Selfies, Selfhood, and How the Camera Helps Us Navigate Complexity

“There is a dialectical exchange between simplicity and complexity, like the one between self-revelation and self-concealment.”

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Annie Dillard on Creativity and What It Takes to Be a Writer
Annie Dillard on Creativity and What It Takes to Be a Writer

“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

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Pioneering 19th-Century Photographer Félix Nadar on Gender and the Single Most Important Factor in Becoming a Successful Artist
Pioneering 19th-Century Photographer Félix Nadar on Gender and the Single Most Important Factor in Becoming a Successful Artist

“To seek honor before profit is the surest means of finding profit with honor.”

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Aldous Huxley on the Transcendent Power of Music and Why It Sings to Our Souls
Aldous Huxley on the Transcendent Power of Music and Why It Sings to Our Souls

“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

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John Steinbeck on Writing, the Crucible of Creativity, and the Mobilizing Power of the Impossible
John Steinbeck on Writing, the Crucible of Creativity, and the Mobilizing Power of the Impossible

“A good writer always works at the impossible.”

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Rilke’s Redemption: The Beloved Poet’s Stirring Letter to His Boyhood Teacher at the Military Academy That Almost Broke His Soul
Rilke’s Redemption: The Beloved Poet’s Stirring Letter to His Boyhood Teacher at the Military Academy That Almost Broke His Soul

“Life is very singularly made to surprise us (where it does not utterly appall us).”

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Pioneering Psychologist William James on Attention, Multitasking, and the Mental Habit That Sets Great Minds Apart
Pioneering Psychologist William James on Attention, Multitasking, and the Mental Habit That Sets Great Minds Apart

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

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Why Love Hurts: The Sociology of How Our Institutions Rather Than Our Personal Psychological Failings Shape the Romantic Agony of Modern Life
Why Love Hurts: The Sociology of How Our Institutions Rather Than Our Personal Psychological Failings Shape the Romantic Agony of Modern Life

“To perform gender identity and gender struggles is to perform the institutional and cultural core dilemmas and ambivalence of modernity.”

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