Brain Pickings Icon
Brain Pickings

Reads tagged with “books”

Stranger in the Village: James Baldwin’s Prophetic Insight into Race and Reality, with a Shimmering Introduction by Gwendolyn Brooks
Stranger in the Village: James Baldwin’s Prophetic Insight into Race and Reality, with a Shimmering Introduction by Gwendolyn Brooks

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

read article

How to Weigh Your Options and Decide Wisely: Benjamin Franklin’s Pioneering Pros and Cons Framework
How to Weigh Your Options and Decide Wisely: Benjamin Franklin’s Pioneering Pros and Cons Framework

A worksheet for the moral mathematics of decision-making from America’s original prophet of self-improvement.

read article

Wordsworth on Genius and the Creative Responsibility of Elevating Taste
Wordsworth on Genius and the Creative Responsibility of Elevating Taste

“To create taste is to call forth and bestow power, of which knowledge is the effect; and there lies the true difficulty.”

read article

Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing
Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing

“To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

read article

The Puzzle We Call Being: Walt Whitman on Listening to the Song of Existence, Animated
The Puzzle We Call Being: Walt Whitman on Listening to the Song of Existence, Animated

“Now I will do nothing but listen, / To accrue what I hear into this song…”

read article

Perspective in the Age of Opinion: Timely Wisdom from a Century Ago
Perspective in the Age of Opinion: Timely Wisdom from a Century Ago

“A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.”

read article

View Full Site

Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I get a small percentage of its price. That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to maintain the site, and is very much appreciated