The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “philosophy”

The Wisdom of the Heart: Henry Miller on the Art of Living
The Wisdom of the Heart: Henry Miller on the Art of Living

“On how one orients himself to the moment depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.”

read article

William James on the Psychology of Habit
William James on the Psychology of Habit

“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.”

read article

Hermann Hesse on What Trees Teach Us About Belonging and Life
Hermann Hesse on What Trees Teach Us About Belonging and Life

“When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.”

read article

The Last Pictures: A Time-Capsule of Humanity in 100 Images Sent into Space for Eternity
The Last Pictures: A Time-Capsule of Humanity in 100 Images Sent into Space for Eternity

“Just as the topology of space is at odds with everyday human experience, the ‘time’ of space is utterly foreign.”

read article

This Is Water: David Foster Wallace on Life
This Is Water: David Foster Wallace on Life

Revisiting the tragic literary hero’s only public insights on life.

read article

Susan Sontag on Life, Death, Art, and Freedom
Susan Sontag on Life, Death, Art, and Freedom

“Oh, where is the out-going freedom, the instrumental freedom from, freedom that is not this enormous possession of one’s own heart which is death?”

read article

Anaïs Nin on the Meaning of Life and the Dangers of the Internet, Before the Internet
Anaïs Nin on the Meaning of Life and the Dangers of the Internet, Before the Internet

“We believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people… This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us.”

read article

Charles Bukowski, Arthur C. Clarke, Annie Dillard, John Cage, and Others on the Meaning of Life
Charles Bukowski, Arthur C. Clarke, Annie Dillard, John Cage, and Others on the Meaning of Life

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

read article

Ted Hughes on the Universal Inner Child, in a Moving Letter to His Son
Ted Hughes on the Universal Inner Child, in a Moving Letter to His Son

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated.”

read article

Christopher Hitchens on Mortality
Christopher Hitchens on Mortality

“To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)