The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone

“The people we love are built into us.”

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Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love

“Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back.”

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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

“Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged.”

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The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred

“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.”

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Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality

“We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water.”

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What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the Universe
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the Universe

Searching for “that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life.”

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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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The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It

“Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal.”

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The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love

“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.”

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Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and Seeing the Heart of Reality
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and Seeing the Heart of Reality

“Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent.”

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