The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “Goethe”

Frida Kahlo on the Meanings of the Colors
Frida Kahlo on the Meanings of the Colors

From the color of madness and mystery to that of distance and tenderness.

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The Heroism of Being a Contrarian: Jacob Bronowski on the Essential Character Trait of the Creative Person
The Heroism of Being a Contrarian: Jacob Bronowski on the Essential Character Trait of the Creative Person

“The creative personality is always one that looks on the world as fit for change and on himself as an instrument for change.”

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The Joy of Suffering Overcome: Young Beethoven’s Stirring Letter to His Brothers About the Loneliness of Living with Deafness and How Music Saved His Life
The Joy of Suffering Overcome: Young Beethoven’s Stirring Letter to His Brothers About the Loneliness of Living with Deafness and How Music Saved His Life

“Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce?”

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Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft on the Imagination and Its Seductive Power in Human Relationships
Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft on the Imagination and Its Seductive Power in Human Relationships

“These emotions … appear to me to be the distinctive characteristic of genius, the foundation of taste, and of that exquisite relish for the beauties of nature, of which the common herd of eaters and drinkers and child-begeters, certainly have no idea.”

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Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on Selfhood, the Crucible of Identity, and What Makes Life’s Transience Bearable
Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on Selfhood, the Crucible of Identity, and What Makes Life’s Transience Bearable

“It is crucial to understand that experience itself is not merely an empirical process of appropriating or digesting blocks of life. Experience is rather a journey of transfiguration. Both that which is lived and the one who lives it are transfigured.”

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Neuroscientist Christof Koch on How the “Qualia” of Our Experience Illuminate the Central Mystery of Consciousness
Neuroscientist Christof Koch on How the “Qualia” of Our Experience Illuminate the Central Mystery of Consciousness

“Without consciousness there is nothing… Consciousness is the central fact of your life.”

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Insomniac City: Bill Hayes’s Extraordinary Love Letter to New York, Oliver Sacks, and Love Itself
Insomniac City: Bill Hayes’s Extraordinary Love Letter to New York, Oliver Sacks, and Love Itself

“The most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time.”

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Oliver Sacks on Evolving Our Notions of Normalcy to Include the Differently Abled
Oliver Sacks on Evolving Our Notions of Normalcy to Include the Differently Abled

“If a tenth or a quarter of the population have some condition, it has to be accepted as a legitimate form of life.”

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Legendary Anthropologist Margaret Mead on Work, Leisure, and Creativity
Legendary Anthropologist Margaret Mead on Work, Leisure, and Creativity

“If we make one criterion for defining the artist… the impulse to make something new… — a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good — then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity.”

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Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Freedom of Expression and the Vital Role of Art as Both Insurgency and Acceptance
Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Freedom of Expression and the Vital Role of Art as Both Insurgency and Acceptance

“The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.”

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