The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization

“Self-knowledge… is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but… the prime moral privilege.”

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May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent

“A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used.”

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Against the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius
Against the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius

“Great genial power… consists… in being altogether receptive.”

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The Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope
The Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope

“Hope is a diagnostic human trait, and this simple cortex symptom seems to be a prime factor in our inspection of our universe.”

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Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves
Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves

“Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.”

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The Paradox of Free Will
The Paradox of Free Will

The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.

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Audre Lorde on What to Do When Difference Ruptures Society
Audre Lorde on What to Do When Difference Ruptures Society

“My responsibility is to speak the truth as I feel it, and to attempt to speak it with as much precision and beauty as possible.”

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Maya Angelou on Writing and Our Responsibility to Our Creative Gifts
Maya Angelou on Writing and Our Responsibility to Our Creative Gifts

“I believe talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.”

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Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Blind Spots of Sympathy
Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Blind Spots of Sympathy

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others… There is a virgin forest in each.”

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Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it… It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our ‘self.’”

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