The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

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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The Hour of Land: Terry Tempest Williams on the Responsibility of Awe and the Wilderness as an Antidote to the War Within Ourselves
The Hour of Land: Terry Tempest Williams on the Responsibility of Awe and the Wilderness as an Antidote to the War Within Ourselves

“Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder.”

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Subjectifying the Universe: Ursula K. Le Guin on Science and Poetry as Complementary Modes of Comprehending and Tending to the Natural World
Subjectifying the Universe: Ursula K. Le Guin on Science and Poetry as Complementary Modes of Comprehending and Tending to the Natural World

“Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe.”

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Meryl Streep Reads “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath
Meryl Streep Reads “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath

A paean and requiem for new parenthood — the love, the strangeness, the surreal and magnetic disorientation of it.

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The Habits of Light: A Celebration of Pioneering Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Whose Calculations Proved That the Universe Is Expanding
The Habits of Light: A Celebration of Pioneering Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Whose Calculations Proved That the Universe Is Expanding

“The universe is made of distance and of dust.”

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Christopher Hitchens on Animal Rights, Our Human Hubris, and the Lesser Appreciated Moral of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
Christopher Hitchens on Animal Rights, Our Human Hubris, and the Lesser Appreciated Moral of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”

“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

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Stunning, Sensual Illustrations for a Rare 1913 Edition of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ by English Artist Margaret C. Cook
Stunning, Sensual Illustrations for a Rare 1913 Edition of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ by English Artist Margaret C. Cook

“Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death…”

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Carl Sagan on Mystery, Why Common Sense Blinds Us to the Universe, and How to Live with the Unknown
Carl Sagan on Mystery, Why Common Sense Blinds Us to the Universe, and How to Live with the Unknown

“We are bathing in mystery and confusion… That will always be our destiny. The universe will always be much richer than our ability to understand it.”

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The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor
The Art of Sympathetic Enthusiasm: Goethe on the Only Opinion Worth Voicing About Another’s Life and Creative Labor

In praise of the “loving sympathy” that makes life worthy of living.

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Audre Lorde on Kinship Across Difference and the Importance of Unity Within Movements for Equality and Social Change
Audre Lorde on Kinship Across Difference and the Importance of Unity Within Movements for Equality and Social Change

“How can we use each other’s differences in our common battles for a livable future?”

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