The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Figuring”

Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on Science, Spirit, and Our Search for Meaning
Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on Science, Spirit, and Our Search for Meaning

“It is only a narrow passage of truth (no matter whether scientific or other truth) that passes between the Scylla of a blue fog of mysticism and the Charybdis of a sterile rationalism. This will always be full of pitfalls and one can fall down on both sides.”

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Harriet Hosmer on Art and Ambition: The World’s First Successful Woman Sculptor on What It Takes to Be a Great Artist
Harriet Hosmer on Art and Ambition: The World’s First Successful Woman Sculptor on What It Takes to Be a Great Artist

“If one knew but one-half the difficulties an artist has to surmount… the public would be less ready to censure him for his shortcomings or slow advancement. The only remedy I know is patience with perseverance, and these are always sure, with a real honest love for art, to produce something.”

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Rachel Carson’s Birdsong Notation, Set to Music
Rachel Carson’s Birdsong Notation, Set to Music

A melodic homage to the patron saint of the modern environmental conscience.

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The More Loving One: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads W.H. Auden’s Sublime Ode to Our Unrequited Love for the Universe
The More Loving One: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads W.H. Auden’s Sublime Ode to Our Unrequited Love for the Universe

“If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.”

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Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert
Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert

“Susie… come home… and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to… I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you… that the expectation… makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart beats so fast.”

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Art as the Crucible of Progress and the Dangerous Cult of Blind Innovation, with Rare Woodcuts by Artist Elfriede Abbe
Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Art as the Crucible of Progress and the Dangerous Cult of Blind Innovation, with Rare Woodcuts by Artist Elfriede Abbe

“The contemplation of excellence produces excellence, if not similar, yet parallel.”

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Herman Melville’s Passionate, Beautiful, Heartbreaking Love Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville’s Passionate, Beautiful, Heartbreaking Love Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s… The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds.”

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After Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Neil Gaiman’s Stunning Poem Celebrating Rachel Carson’s Legacy of Culture-Shifting Courage
After Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Neil Gaiman’s Stunning Poem Celebrating Rachel Carson’s Legacy of Culture-Shifting Courage

“Nothing is ever over / life breathes life in its turn / Sometimes the people listen / Sometimes the people learn”

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The Art-Science of Perspective: How an Innovation in Figurative Drawing Powered Galileo’s Astronomical Revolution
The Art-Science of Perspective: How an Innovation in Figurative Drawing Powered Galileo’s Astronomical Revolution

A journey from the farthest cosmic horizons of reality to the depths of our poetic truth.

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Margaret Fuller on What Makes a Great Leader: Timeless Wisdom from the Founding Mother of American Feminism
Margaret Fuller on What Makes a Great Leader: Timeless Wisdom from the Founding Mother of American Feminism

In praise of the leader “to whom this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others.”

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