The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

We Are Made of Music, We Are Made of Time: Violinist Natalie Hodges on the Poetic Science of Sound and Feeling
We Are Made of Music, We Are Made of Time: Violinist Natalie Hodges on the Poetic Science of Sound and Feeling

“Time renders most individual moments meaningless… but it is only through the passage of time that life acquires its meaning. And that meaning itself is constantly in flux.”

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Iris Murdoch on Truth, the Meaning of Goodness, and How Attention Unmasks the Universe
Iris Murdoch on Truth, the Meaning of Goodness, and How Attention Unmasks the Universe

“When we really know something we feel we’ve always known it. Yet also it’s terribly distant, farther than any star… beyond the world, not in the clouds or in heaven, but a light that shows the world, this world, as it really is.”

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David Byrne’s Illustrated History of the Possible Future
David Byrne’s Illustrated History of the Possible Future

“The way things were, the way we made things, it turns out, none of it was inevitable — none of it is the way things have to be.”

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Losing Love, Finding Love, and Living with the Fragility of It All
Losing Love, Finding Love, and Living with the Fragility of It All

“What an astonishing thing it is to find something. Children, who excel at it — chiefly because the world is still so new to them that they can’t help but notice it — understand this, and automatically delight in it.”

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The Fragile Species: A Forgotten Masterpiece of Perspective on How to Live with Ourselves and Each Other
The Fragile Species: A Forgotten Masterpiece of Perspective on How to Live with Ourselves and Each Other

“We need a better word than chance… To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness.”

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The Remedy for Despair, from Gabriel Marcel to Nick Cave
The Remedy for Despair, from Gabriel Marcel to Nick Cave

“To love anybody is to expect something from him, something which can neither be defined nor foreseen; it is at the same time in someway to make it possible for him to fulfill this expectation.”

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Margaret Wise Brown and the Puzzle of What Makes a Thing Itself (and You Yourself)
Margaret Wise Brown and the Puzzle of What Makes a Thing Itself (and You Yourself)

Aristotle, Alice, and a back flap.

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Cosmic Consolation for Human Hardship: The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on How to Live with Life
Cosmic Consolation for Human Hardship: The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on How to Live with Life

“One of the best things a man can bring into the world with him is a natural humility of spirit. About the next best thing he can bring, and they usually go together, is an appreciative spirit — a loving and susceptible heart.”

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The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death
The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death

“Immortality is not a matter of more or less time.”

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Nina Simone’s Gum and the Shimmering Strangeness of How Art Casts Its Transcendent Spell on Us
Nina Simone’s Gum and the Shimmering Strangeness of How Art Casts Its Transcendent Spell on Us

The metaphysical made physical in a symphonic celebration of imagination, collaboration, and the human heart.

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