The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “Thoreau”

The Loveliest Children’s Books of 2021
The Loveliest Children’s Books of 2021

From the river to the Milky Way, by way of trees, geese, and unsung heroes.

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Orwell’s Roses: Rebecca Solnit on How Nature Sustains Us, Beauty as Fuel for Change, and the Value of the Meaningless Things That Give Our Lives Meaning
Orwell’s Roses: Rebecca Solnit on How Nature Sustains Us, Beauty as Fuel for Change, and the Value of the Meaningless Things That Give Our Lives Meaning

“What is it that makes it possible to do the work that is of highest value to others and one’s central purpose in life? It may appear — to others, sometimes even to oneself — trivial, irrelevant, indulgent, pointless, distracted, or any of those other pejoratives with which the quantifiable beats down the unquantifiable.”

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The Century-Old Field Guide to Wonder and the Forgotten Woman Who Laid the Groundwork for the Youth Climate Action Movement
The Century-Old Field Guide to Wonder and the Forgotten Woman Who Laid the Groundwork for the Youth Climate Action Movement

“All things seem possible in nature; yet this seeming is always guarded by the eager quest of what IS true. Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it.”

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Matter, Music, and the Mind
Matter, Music, and the Mind

“Sound is sea: pattern lapping pattern… Matter delights in music, and became Bach.”

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Gardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise
Gardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise

“Can you plant a garden to stop a war? It depends how you think about time. It depends what you think a seed does, if it’s tossed into fertile soil.”

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Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity
Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity

“Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?”

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A General Theory of Possibility: The Abstract Art of Otherwise and the Physics of Resilience
A General Theory of Possibility: The Abstract Art of Otherwise and the Physics of Resilience

“As always happens with contradictions, something in the assumptions has to give… Declaring something impossible leads to more things being possible.”

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The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality
The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality

“Potentially, every tree is immortal.”

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Love Is the Last Word: Aldous Huxley on Knowledge vs. Understanding and the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness
Love Is the Last Word: Aldous Huxley on Knowledge vs. Understanding and the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness

“All of us are knowers, all the time; it is only occasionally and in spite of ourselves that we understand the mystery of given reality.”

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The Spirituality of Science and the Wonder of the Wilderness: Ornithologist and Wildlife Ecologist J. Drew Lanham on Nature as Worship
The Spirituality of Science and the Wonder of the Wilderness: Ornithologist and Wildlife Ecologist J. Drew Lanham on Nature as Worship

“As I wander into the predawn dark of an autumn wood, I feel the presence of things beyond flesh, bone, and blood. My being expands to fit the limitlessness of the wild world.”

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