The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads by Maria Popova

Carl Jung on How to Live and the Origin of “Do the Next Right Thing”
Carl Jung on How to Live and the Origin of “Do the Next Right Thing”

“There is no pit you cannot climb out of provided you make the right effort at the right place… do the next thing with diligence and devotion.”

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Music, the Neural Harmonics of Emotion, and How Love Recomposes the Brain
Music, the Neural Harmonics of Emotion, and How Love Recomposes the Brain

“Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”

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Darwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living
Darwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living

“If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

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Trailblazing Composer Julia Perry on Music as the Universal Language of Love and Mutual Understanding
Trailblazing Composer Julia Perry on Music as the Universal Language of Love and Mutual Understanding

“Music has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it… And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another.”

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Shifting the Silence to Find the Meaning: 95-Year-Old Artist, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on How to Live and How to Die
Shifting the Silence to Find the Meaning: 95-Year-Old Artist, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on How to Live and How to Die

“The universe makes a sound — is a sound. In the core of this sound there’s a silence, a silence that creates that sound, which is not its opposite, but its inseparable soul… Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate… It can watch other flowers grow and become what they are.”

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The Scar: A Tender Illustrated French Meditation on Loss and Healing
The Scar: A Tender Illustrated French Meditation on Loss and Healing

Uncommon consolation from the body to the soul.

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Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness
Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness

“Eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies.”

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Love and Limerence: The Forgotten Psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s Revelatory Research into the Confusions of Bonding
Love and Limerence: The Forgotten Psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s Revelatory Research into the Confusions of Bonding

“It may not be in contemplation of outer space that the greatest discoveries and explorations of the coming centuries will occur, but in our finally deciding to heed the dictum of self-understanding.”

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Life, Death, and What Fills the Interlude with Meaning: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stirring Diary Reflections on His Dying Mother and His Five-Year-Old Daughter
Life, Death, and What Fills the Interlude with Meaning: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stirring Diary Reflections on His Dying Mother and His Five-Year-Old Daughter

“I saw my little Una… so full of spirit and life that she was life itself. And then I looked at my poor dying mother, and seemed to see the whole of human existence at once, standing in the dusty midst of it.”

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Women in Trees: Sweet and Subversive Vintage Photographs of Defiant Delight
Women in Trees: Sweet and Subversive Vintage Photographs of Defiant Delight

The chance-anthropology of a secret tribe.

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