Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaCulture Sylvia Plath and the Loneliness of Loveverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria Popova“Life is loneliness… Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship — but the loneliness of the soul, in its appalling self-consciousness, is horrible and overpowering.” Western psychologists have rightly...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaFrederick Douglass Sarah Mapps Douglass’s Flowers: The First Surviving Art Signed by an African-American Womanverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaA rose is a rose is a revolution. In his thrice-revised and expanded autobiographies, Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Bailey, recounts changing his surname multiple times to cover his fugitive trail....
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaAtoms Probable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Livingverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaHow our cosmic improbability confers dignity and meaning upon our shared existence. “What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious,” Lisel Mueller, who lived to nearly 100, wrote in her...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaPoetry The Mirror of Enigmas: Chance, the Universe, and the Pale Blues of Knowing Who We Areverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria Popova“There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is.” It takes a great sobriety of spirit to know your own depths — and your limits. It takes a special grandeur of spirit to...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaRachel Carson The Ocean and the Meaning of Lifeverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria Popova“Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp… the ultimate mystery of Life itself.” This essay is from...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaJames Baldwin James Baldwin on Love, the Illusion of Choice, and the Paradox of Freedomverified_publisher Brain Pickings by Maria Popova“Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.” We, none of us, choose the century we are born in, or the skin we are born in, or the chromosomes we are born with. We don’t choose the incredibly...
