The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

The Labyrinth of Consciousness: Walter Benjamin on Dreams and the Undertow of the Mind
The Labyrinth of Consciousness: Walter Benjamin on Dreams and the Undertow of the Mind

Searching for the byway to the unconscious.

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The Unphotographable: Henry Williamson on the Transcendence of the Winter Sky After a Blizzard
The Unphotographable: Henry Williamson on the Transcendence of the Winter Sky After a Blizzard

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“Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Radical and Rapturous Life, Illustrated
“Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Radical and Rapturous Life, Illustrated

“Lives don’t work the way most books do… Lives are funny and sad, scary and comforting, beautiful and ugly, but not when they’re supposed to be, and sometimes all at the same time.”

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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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Affirmation in Solitude: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Poetry of Penguins
Affirmation in Solitude: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Poetry of Penguins

“The poets cannot hear each other; they cannot see each other. They can only feel the other’s warmth.”

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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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How to Savor Winter: A Century-Old Poetic Recipe for Bliss in the Bleakest Season
How to Savor Winter: A Century-Old Poetic Recipe for Bliss in the Bleakest Season

In praise of “the poetry of silence and darkness,” from which life emerges “fresher, fairer, sweeter for its long winter rest.”

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What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity
What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity

“Creation is a delicate and experimental thing… Knowledge and effective action here become one gesture; the gesture of understanding the world and changing it.”

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Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge
Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge

“There are ways of failing in solitude as in society.”

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The Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention
The Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention

“An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer.”

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