When I first began reading Brain Pickings—eons ago—I would skip her commentary in the “margins” and go straight to the quotes, because that is what I wanted.
Now a days the quotes pale into insignificance as I rush to read what she has to day. If ever there was a case of the frame being more beautiful than the art it contains, it is the Marginalian’s (@mariapopova)

#Art #Gratitude #Reading #Marginalia #Books #Reading #NaturalPhilosophy #MariaPopova

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A life of reading is a richer, nobler, larger, more shimmering life.

#MariaPopova (1984) in the Introduction to #AVelocityOfBeing - Letters to a Young Reader (2018)

If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. Hang out with, and learn from people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.

#ExcellentAdviceForLiving (Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier) (2023)
#KevinKelly (1952)
#MariaPopova (1984)

Anger is not the proper response to anger. When you see someone angry you are seeing their pain. Compassion is the proper response to anger.

#ExcellentAdviceForLiving (Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier) (2023)
#KevinKelly (1952)
#MariaPopova (1984)

Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind be kind. No exceptions. Don’t confuse kindness with weakness.

#ExcellentAdviceForLiving (Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier) (2023)
#KevinKelly (1952)
#MariaPopova (1984)

> ... And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others....
> ... a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/04/24/primo-levi-survival-in-auschwitz/
#MariaPopova with #PrimoLevi #OnHappiness and #Discontent
#IsThisAMan #SurvivalInAuschwitz
/HT @mariapopova

@mariapopova

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.

from #DanielGilbert (1957) #TEDTalk at #TED2014 (March) titled “The psychology of your future self” in #Vancouver

#MariaPopova

@priscillastuckey

With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see. Its (Schistostega Pennata, a.k.a. Goblin's Gold) life and ours exist only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.

#RobinWallKimmerer
#MariaPopova

“the only sane response is to glitter”

Only when a privilege is abruptly taken away from us do we become aware of its existence.
-- Maria Popova (@brainpicker)

⬆ #Quotes #MariaPopova #Privilege

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #TheMaze #Dollhouse #Canyonlands #Utah

> Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

lian.org/2015/08/19/simone-weil-attention-gravity-and-grace/

#SimoneWeil /HT #MariaPopova for #TheMarginalian on #Attention #AttentionAndTheWIll #TheWillAndAttention
https://www.themargina

> Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/19/simone-weil-attention-gravity-and-grace/

#SimoneWeil /HT #MariaPopova for #TheMarginalian on #Attention #AttentionAndTheWIll #TheWillAndAttention

„This life I have made is too small. It doesn’t allow enough in: enough ideas, enough beliefs, enough encounters with the exuberant #magic of #existence. I have been so keen to deny it, to veer deliberately towards the rational, to cling solely to the experiences that are directly observable by others. Only now, when everything is taken away, can I see what a folly this is“

#MariaPopova about the #book Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, by #KatherineMay

https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/04/katherine-may-enchantment/

> ... poet Nikki Giovanni’s insistence in her forgotten conversation with James Baldwin that “if you don’t understand yourself you don’t understand anybody else.”

https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/08/16/czeslaw-milosz-love/

# CzesławMiłosz #CZeslawMilosz #NikkiGiovanni #JamesBaldwin

by #MariaPopova
/HT @mariapopova

> My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind — without selective interest, experience... chaos... [WJ:William James]
> .. commonplace and utterly radical for us today — somehow, mesmerized by the glowing rectangles we carry everywhere, we seem to have relinquished this most elemental form of agency shaping our experience of life.[MP:}
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/25/william-james-attention/
#MariaPopova with #SimoneWeil and #WIlliamJames at #TheMarginalian
/HT @MariaPopova

> .. #ChildrensLiterature has always been ideological. Consider an ABC from the 1680s: ‘A. In Adam’s Fall / We Sinned all.’ And, next to a picture of a Bible, ‘B. Thy Life to Mend / This Book Attend.’ The New England Primer teaches more than just literacy.”.. Teaching children to obey a moral authority can be understood as a #MoralLesson, but it can also be understood as a #PoliticalLesson.”
https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/09/21/tales-of-little-rebels/
#MariaPopova
/HT @mariapopova
from The 7 Godivas's page.
See #YertleTheTurtle!

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realise you’re already in heaven now.

#JackKerouac (1922 - 1969)
#MariaPopova

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realise you’re already in heaven now.

#JackKerouac (1922 - 1969)
#MariaPopova

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realise you’re already in heaven now.

#JackKerouac (1922 - 1969)
#MariaPopova

> English social psychologist and #LondonSchoolOfEconomics co-founder #GrahamWallas, sixty-eight at the time, penned The #ArtOfThought — an insightful theory outlining the four stages of the #CreativeProcess, based both on his own empirical observations and on the accounts of famous inventors and polymaths.. out of print, with surviving copies sold for a fortune and available in a few public libraries..
https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/08/28/the-art-of-thought-graham-wallas-stages/
#MariaPopova #Thinking #Wallas Is #Incubation related to #niksen?

> Wallas outlines four stages of the #CreativeProcess
preparation,
incubation,
illumination, and
verification
dancing in a delicate osmosis of conscious and unconscious work... Wallas proposes a technique for optimizing the fruits of the Incubation stage — something our modern-day psychology of #productivity would come to confirm — by deliberately building interruptions of concentrated effort into our #workflow:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/08/28/the-art-of-thought-graham-wallas-stages/
#MariaPopova on #GrahamWallas #FourStagesOfThought