Maria Popova
Writer and founder of The Marginalian, a reader-funded blog on books, science, art and philosophy.
Maria Popova did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person - a dangerous desire too often mistaken for love - is wanting to save yourself, to spare yourself the disappointment and heartbreak and loss inseparable from being a creature with hopes and longings constantly colliding with reality, with the indifference of time and chance, with the opposing hopes and longings of others.
↗Do Not Spare Yourself: An Antidote to Feeling Like You Are Waiting to Start Livingthemarginalian.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordslife stares mutely back at us, immense and indifferent, having abled us with opposable thumbs and handicapped us with a consciousness capable of self-reference that renders us dissatisfied with the banality of mere survival.
↗The Weasel and the Meaning of It All: Annie Dillard on How to Livethemarginalian.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsIt is true, of course, that the self is a place of illusion - but it is also the only place where our physical reality and social reality cohere to pull the universe into focus, into meaning.
↗Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peacethemarginalian.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThere is but a single salve for this disorientation - to uncover, often at a staggering cost to the ego, the constant beneath this flickering constellation, a constant some may call soul.
↗Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peacethemarginalian.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
A meaningful encounter between two creatures changes both of them and ties chance to meaning.
Their wordsEncounters are events, they touch things in us, change things in us, bend probability in the shape of the possible, tie time and chance into a knot of meaning between two creatures.
↗The Weasel and the Meaning of It All: Annie Dillard on How to Livethemarginalian.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
A life spent in comfort, certainty and convenience is the most damning way a person can live.
Their wordsthere is no damnation greater than spending our allotted days in the catatonia of comfort and certainty, our inner lives automated by habit and halogen lit by convenience.
↗Do Not Spare Yourself: An Antidote to Feeling Like You Are Waiting to Start Livingthemarginalian.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsthat our early limbic contact with our parents profoundly shapes our character, laying down the wiring for emotional habits and patterns of connecting that greatly influence what we bring to all subsequent relationships in life, either expanding or contracting our capacity for "positivity resonance" depending on how nurturing or toxic those formative relationships were.
↗How to Handle a Narcissistic and Abusive Parent: Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to Fatherthemarginalian.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsthe most devastating and deadening effect of growing up in such an emotional environment - the way in which we come to mistake the crumbs of mercy for a feast of love.
↗How to Handle a Narcissistic and Abusive Parent: Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to Fatherthemarginalian.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 years earlier
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Their wordsTo look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night.