The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “culture”

C.S. Lewis on Our Task in Troubled Times
C.S. Lewis on Our Task in Troubled Times

“Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future… The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

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How to Cherish Your Human Condition: The Poetic Naturalist Loren Eiseley on the Meaning of Life
How to Cherish Your Human Condition: The Poetic Naturalist Loren Eiseley on the Meaning of Life

“The truth is that we are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age.”

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Nick Cave on Creative Work as an Instrument of Self-Forgiveness and the Necessity of Hope in a Fragile World
Nick Cave on Creative Work as an Instrument of Self-Forgiveness and the Necessity of Hope in a Fragile World

In praise of “the necessary and urgent need to love life and one another, despite the casual cruelty of the world.”

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Sing, Don’t Scream: D.H. Lawrence on the Strength of Sensitivity
Sing, Don’t Scream: D.H. Lawrence on the Strength of Sensitivity

“Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy.”

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Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community
Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community

“To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience.”

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James Baldwin on Reconciling Acceptance and Action
James Baldwin on Reconciling Acceptance and Action

Notes on the change that begins in the heart.

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How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James
How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James

“It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.”

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Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song
Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song

“The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.”

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Artist Nina Katchadourian’s Otherworldly Plants Made of Trash and Tenderness
Artist Nina Katchadourian’s Otherworldly Plants Made of Trash and Tenderness

A haunting invitation to reckon with the relationship between nature and human nature, consumption and creativity, and the mind’s indomitable capacity for playful wonderment.

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Mushrooms: Cellist Zoë Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit
Mushrooms: Cellist Zoë Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit

“Our foot’s in the door.”

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