The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “diaries”

Artist Anne Truitt on the Transcendent Sense of “Enough” and the Epiphany That Revealed to Her the Purpose of Art
Artist Anne Truitt on the Transcendent Sense of “Enough” and the Epiphany That Revealed to Her the Purpose of Art

“I saw myself stretched like brown earth in furrows, open to the sky, well planted, my life as a human being complete.”

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Italo Calvino on Racial Justice: The Beloved Italian Writer’s Stirring Account of the Early Civil Rights Movement and His Encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Italo Calvino on Racial Justice: The Beloved Italian Writer’s Stirring Account of the Early Civil Rights Movement and His Encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr.

“What counts is what we are, and the way we deepen our relationship with the world and with others, a relationship that can be one of both love for all that exists and of desire for its transformation.”

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Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living
Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living

“It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it.”

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Stitching the Stars: Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell on the Needle as a Double-Edged Instrument of the Mind and Why Women Are Better Suited for Astronomy Than Men
Stitching the Stars: Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell on the Needle as a Double-Edged Instrument of the Mind and Why Women Are Better Suited for Astronomy Than Men

“The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spider web of the micrometer.”

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May Sarton on Anger as Creativity in Reverse and a Safety Valve Against Madness
May Sarton on Anger as Creativity in Reverse and a Safety Valve Against Madness

“The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive.”

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Hooked on the Heavens: How Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer, Nearly Died by Meathook in the Name of Science
Hooked on the Heavens: How Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer, Nearly Died by Meathook in the Name of Science

How a paragon of persistence in the face of hardship discovered eight comets and paved the way for women in science.

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The Art of Knowing What to Do in Life: Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Purpose Beyond Expectation and Choice Unbounded by Convention
The Art of Knowing What to Do in Life: Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Purpose Beyond Expectation and Choice Unbounded by Convention

On rising above the maze of conditions and conditionings that limit who we can be.

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John Cheever on the Pain of Loneliness and How It Feeds the Beauty and Creative Restlessness of Youth
John Cheever on the Pain of Loneliness and How It Feeds the Beauty and Creative Restlessness of Youth

“A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey’s gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.”

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Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Freedom of Expression and the Vital Role of Art as Both Insurgency and Acceptance
Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Freedom of Expression and the Vital Role of Art as Both Insurgency and Acceptance

“The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.”

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May Sarton on the Cure for Despair and Why Solitude Is the Seedbed of Self-Discovery
May Sarton on the Cure for Despair and Why Solitude Is the Seedbed of Self-Discovery

“Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.”

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