Reads by Maria Popova

The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul

“Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.”

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Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives

“Human lives… are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence… into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life.”

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How to Live in Light: A Blind Hero of the French Resistance on Seeing the Heart of Life and Contacting the Oneness of Being

“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”

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The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression

“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.”

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D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo

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Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect

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The Half-Life of Hope

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Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and Flowers

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Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden

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Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being

“You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge.”

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Reads by Maria Popova

“Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.”

“Human lives… are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence… into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life.”

“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”

“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.”

“You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge.”

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