The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “optimism”

Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm

“A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams.”

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How to Survive Hopelessness
How to Survive Hopelessness

“You can expect good and bad luck, but good or bad judgment is your prerogative.”

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Favorite Books of 2022
Favorite Books of 2022

From Rumi to Blake to Nick Cave, by way of trees, hummingbirds, grief, and music.

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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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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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Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism

“Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.”

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The Unphotographable: The Moon, the Tide, and the Living Shore
The Unphotographable: The Moon, the Tide, and the Living Shore

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Women Holding Things: Artist Maira Kalman’s Tender and Quirky Ode to the Weight of the World and the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
Women Holding Things: Artist Maira Kalman’s Tender and Quirky Ode to the Weight of the World and the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being

“There can never be enough time. And you can never hold on to it.”

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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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Darwin Among the Machines: A Victorian Visionary’s Prophetic Admonition for Saving Ourselves from Enslavement by Artificial Intelligence
Darwin Among the Machines: A Victorian Visionary’s Prophetic Admonition for Saving Ourselves from Enslavement by Artificial Intelligence

“We are ourselves creating our own successors… We are daily giving them… that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race.”

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