The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “tao te ching”

The Yin-Yang of Fortune and Misfortune: Alan Watts on the Art of Learning Not to Think in Terms of Gain and Loss
The Yin-Yang of Fortune and Misfortune: Alan Watts on the Art of Learning Not to Think in Terms of Gain and Loss

“The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad.”

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Stewart Brand’s Reading List: 76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild Humanity
Stewart Brand’s Reading List: 76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild Humanity

From Homer to home health, by way of Shakespeare, conceptual physics, and a gender-imbalance lament.

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The Letters of Greats: From Ernest Hemingway to Georgia O’Keeffe, a Glimpse of Famous Correspondence
The Letters of Greats: From Ernest Hemingway to Georgia O’Keeffe, a Glimpse of Famous Correspondence

Lessons in love via post, or what Hemingway’s soft side has to do with Maurice Sendak’s early genius.

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Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice

“Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself.”

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Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself
Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself

“In much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”

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Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds
Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds

Enduring ideas for personal refinement from Seneca, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, Emerson, Bruce Lee, Maya Angelou, and more.

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Be Like Water: The Philosophy and Origin of Bruce Lee’s Famous Metaphor for Resilience
Be Like Water: The Philosophy and Origin of Bruce Lee’s Famous Metaphor for Resilience

“In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”

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My Faraway One: The Passionate Love Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz
My Faraway One: The Passionate Love Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

How to woo like an artist, or what the overuse of the dash has to do with finding the most generous muse.

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Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity
Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity

“There is only one solitude, and it is large and not easy to bear… People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult.”

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Busyness and the Creative Life
Ursula K. Le Guin on Busyness and the Creative Life

In praise of the mundane, unquantifiable, impractical activities that feed creative work and fill life with meaning.

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