The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “public domain”

What to Look for During a Total Solar Eclipse: Mabel Loomis Todd’s Poetic 19th-Century Guide to Totality, with Help from Emily Dickinson
What to Look for During a Total Solar Eclipse: Mabel Loomis Todd’s Poetic 19th-Century Guide to Totality, with Help from Emily Dickinson

“A vast, palpable presence seems overwhelming the world. The blue sky changes to gray or dull purple, speedily becoming more dusky, and a death-like trance seizes upon everything earthly.”

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The Drift Called the Infinite: Emily Dickinson on Making Sense of Loss
The Drift Called the Infinite: Emily Dickinson on Making Sense of Loss

Reflections on silence and eternity from the poet laureate of death.

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Good Sense vs. Free Hope: Margaret Fuller on Reaping Wonder from Everyday Reality
Good Sense vs. Free Hope: Margaret Fuller on Reaping Wonder from Everyday Reality

“The mind is not … a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.”

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An Anthem Against Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s Piercing and Prescient 1914 Protest Poem
An Anthem Against Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s Piercing and Prescient 1914 Protest Poem

“To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.”

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The Difficult Balance of Intimacy and Independence: Beloved Philosopher and Poet Kahlil Gibran on the Secret to a Loving and Lasting Relationship
The Difficult Balance of Intimacy and Independence: Beloved Philosopher and Poet Kahlil Gibran on the Secret to a Loving and Lasting Relationship

“Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

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Sir Thomas Browne on the Transcendent Torture of Romantic Friendship
Sir Thomas Browne on the Transcendent Torture of Romantic Friendship

“United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other.”

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love and the Seductions of Honesty
Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love and the Seductions of Honesty

“You must prepare yourself to forbear and to forgive — will you?”

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Emerson on Individual Integrity and Resisting the Tyranny of the Masses
Emerson on Individual Integrity and Resisting the Tyranny of the Masses

“Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence… I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

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Wonder-Sighting in the Medieval World: Stunning Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Comets, with Carl Sagan’s Poetic Meditation on Their Science
Wonder-Sighting in the Medieval World: Stunning Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Comets, with Carl Sagan’s Poetic Meditation on Their Science

“A comet is … a great clock, ticking out decades or geological ages once each perihelion passage, reminding us of the beauty and harmony of the Newtonian universe, and of the daunting insignificance of our place in space and time.”

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Leo Tolstoy on Love and Its Paradoxical Demands
Leo Tolstoy on Love and Its Paradoxical Demands

“Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.”

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