Reads from 2020
The Love of Truth and the Truth of Love: Bertrand Russell on the Two Pillars of Human Flourishing
“Love is wise, hatred is foolish.”
Frederick Douglass on the Wisdom of the Minority and the Real Meaning of Solidarity
“There are times in the experience of almost every community… when… the appointed leaders… exert their powers of mind to complicate, mystify, entangle and obscure the simple truth… to mislead the popular mind, and to corrupt the public heart, — then the humblest may stand forth… opposing… the torrent of evil.”
“I Go Down to the Shore”: Natascha McElhone Reads Mary Oliver’s Spare, Splendid Antidote to Melancholy and Personal Misery
Consolation for the waves of sorry from the waves of the sea.
The Sun, the Shadow, and the Unselved Self: Helen Macdonald on Eclipses as an Antidote to Ideologies of Otherness and a Portal to Human Connection
“A total eclipse wreaks havoc on your sense of self, on rational individuality.”
Of Owls and Roses: Mary Oliver on Happiness, Terror, and the Sublime Interconnectedness of Life
“The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.”
How an Artist is Like a Tree: Paul Klee on Creativity
“Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its root. Between above and below can be no mirrored reflection.”
13-Year-Old Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Prejudice, Its Antidote, and the Five Documents That Shaped Humanity
“No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again… There can be a happy world… when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance.”
Proust on the Essence of Creativity and the Hallmark of Artistic Genius
“Genius [consists] in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.”
The Love of Life in the Face of Death: Keith Haring on Self-Doubt, the Fragility of Being, and Creativity as the Antidote to Our Mortal Anxiety
“It is very important to be in love with life… Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we ‘understand,’ there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything.”
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