The Marginalian was born 16 years ago today (under the outgrown name Brain Pickings). Here are 16 things I've learned about life over the years (and the untold origin story) themarginalian.org/2022/10/23/16-
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Maria Popova
@brainpicker
Reader. Writer. Creator of The Marginalian (long ago named Brain Pickings). Author of #Figuring. Lover of trees. Petter of moss. Rider of a cobalt blue bicycle.
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“A poem … is when you are in love and have the sky in your mouth.”
If you think and feel outside the common cultural box, this is for you:
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“The artist … must consecrate all his toil to the holy spirit of art — such toil is holy, chaste, and demands single-heartedness.”
Dostoyevsky, born 201 years ago today, on creativity and success
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On Vonnegut's 100th birthday, a wonderful illustrated parable about the art of feeling like you have enough, inspired by him
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“Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.”
On Vonnegut's centennial, one of the greatest commencement addresses of all time
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“And it is so simple… You will instantly find how to live.”
Dostoyevsky, born 201 years ago today, discovers the meaning of life in a dream
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“Hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide.”
Wisdom on being human from Vonnegut, born 100 years ago today
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"Music plays into the yearning many of us instinctively have — you know, the God-shaped hole. It is the art form that can most effectively fill that hole, because it makes us feel less alone, existentially."
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Dostoyevsky, born 201 years ago today, on why there are no bad people – substantive read for any deep-thinking, deep-feeling person
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What to do when your parents are dying – simple, profoundly redemptive life-advice from Mary Gaitskill, born on this day in 1954
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On Vonnegut's centennial, his lost lecture on what it takes to be a writer, found and animated
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Duck, Death and the Tulip – an uncommonly tender illustrated meditation on the cycle of life
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How to nurture a love that “would stand as a firm wall,” that “won’t let you fall, and it gives warmth.”
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On Dostoyevsky's birthday, his wife – a remarkable woman who pulled him out of debt and helped him become the writer he is – on the secret to a happy marriage themarginalian.org/2016/02/15/ann
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On Vonnegut's centennial, his life-advice to his children
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Dostoyevsky, born 201 years ago today, reflects on the meaning of life shortly after his death sentence was repealed
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Vonnegut, born 100 years ago today, on the secret of happiness and the meaning of life in a short verse
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On Dostoyevsky's birthday, his wife – a remarkable woman who pulled him out of debt and helped him become the writer he is – on the secret to a happy marriage
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Dostoyevsky, born 201 years ago today, on why there are no bad people – substantive read for any deep-thinking, deep-feeling person
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"I think music, out of all that we can do, at least artistically, is the great indicator that something else is going on, something unexplained, because it allows us to experience genuine moments of transcendence."
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Nick Cave on music, mystery, and the relationship between vulnerability and freedom themarginalian.org/2022/11/10/nic
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Next week, is hosting a (free, virtual) evening of poems written and read by some of the greatest poets of our time
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Nick Cave on music, mystery, and the relationship between vulnerability and freedom
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“If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
On this day in 1958, Steinbeck gave his teenage son some timeless advice on love
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"Pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these thing grow
From a chemical reaction?"
This is superb
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The Thing Itself – C.S. Lewis on what we long for in our existential longing
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To brighten your day, a poem about our primeval bond with nature, turned into an animated song
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The Book of Questions – Pablo Neruda's poetic reckoning with the magic and mystery of life, illustrated
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“If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
On this day in 1958, Steinbeck gave his teenage son some timeless advice on love
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Born on this day in 1914 and once celebrated as the most beautiful woman in the world, Hedy Lamarr invented a system for remote-controlling torpedos that laid the foundation for bluetooth and wifi technology
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“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
Fuel against failure: mailchi.mp/themarginalian
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On Carl Sagan's birthday, the poetic science of comets, with stunning medieval illustrations
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“Everything impinges on everything else… Everything is potentially everywhere.”
Two decades before he won the Nobel for his fiction, John Steinbeck composed a forgotten masterpiece of science and philosophy about how to think
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Stunning 200-year-old illustrations of flowers inspired by Erasmus Darwin and his scandalous scientific poetry introducing the sexual reproduction of plants, which seeded the rudiments of evolutionary theory that his grandson Charles developed themarginalian.org/2022/11/07/the
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Ooh. On Friday the 18th, longtime New Yorker fact-checker Peter Canby is joining for a free public talk about the most slippery of all human handouts: truth creativemornings.com/talks/peter-ca
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“Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge… It can tell us when we’re being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes.”
Where is Carl Sagan when we most need him. He would have been 88 today
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“The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth… The perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth…”
Middle age and the art of self-renewal
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“Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.”
Carl Sagan, who would have been 88 today, on reading and democracy
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The news cycle is relentless. If you're somebody who might benefit from a soulful weekly newsletter, I highly recommend Maria Popova's ('s) . I've subscribed for years. It's a highlight of my week every week.
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A lesson in solidarity and generosity of spirit. Thank you for this timely and beautiful essay. #MarieCurie #Einstein
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The great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm on surmounting the biggest obstacle to love
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On Carl Sagan's birthday, his poetic explanation of how stars are born, live, die, and give us life
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