The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws
C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

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Physician Allison Ballantine’s Short, Stirring Commencement Address on Living with Presence
Physician Allison Ballantine’s Short, Stirring Commencement Address on Living with Presence

How the hamster wheel of achievement and approval can cheat us.

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Chinua Achebe on the Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in the World
Chinua Achebe on the Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in the World

The difference between blind optimism and the urge to improve the world’s imperfection.

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Buddhist Economics: How to Start Prioritizing People Over Products and Creativity Over Consumption
Buddhist Economics: How to Start Prioritizing People Over Products and Creativity Over Consumption

“Work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.”

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Alan Watts on the Difference Between Belief and Faith
Alan Watts on the Difference Between Belief and Faith

How to master the delicate dance of unconditional openness to the truth.

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The Poetics of Reverie: Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Love, Solitude, and Happiness
The Poetics of Reverie: Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Love, Solitude, and Happiness

“Love is the contact of two poetries, the fusion of two reveries.”

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Swami Vivekananda on the Secret of Work: Intelligent Consolation for the Pressures of Productivity from 1896
Swami Vivekananda on the Secret of Work: Intelligent Consolation for the Pressures of Productivity from 1896

“Every work that we do… every thought that we think, leaves such an impression on the mind-stuff…”

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Thoreau on What Skunk-Cabbage Can Teach Us About Optimism and the Meaning of Human Life
Thoreau on What Skunk-Cabbage Can Teach Us About Optimism and the Meaning of Human Life

“There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead.”

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The Art of Looking: How to Live with Presence, Break the Tyranny of Productivity, and Learn to See Our Everyday Wonderland
The Art of Looking: How to Live with Presence, Break the Tyranny of Productivity, and Learn to See Our Everyday Wonderland

“When you look closely at anything familiar, it transmogrifies into something unfamiliar.”

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The Measure of a Life Well Lived: Henry Miller on Growing Old, the Perils of Success, and the Secret of Remaining Young at Heart
The Measure of a Life Well Lived: Henry Miller on Growing Old, the Perils of Success, and the Secret of Remaining Young at Heart

“If you can fall in love again and again… if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.”

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