Maria Popova exploring literature, philosophy, art, and the search for meaning.
In 1964, Pantheon Books invited J.R.R. Tolkien (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) to write an introduction to George MacDonald’s The Golden Key, which he had praised in Tree and Leaf — the small, splendid essay collection that gave us his uncommonly insightfu…
"There is nothing more revealing than to see a thinking person walking, just as there is nothing more revealing than to see a walking person thinking... Walking and thinking are in a perpetual relationship that is based on trust."
On where to seek refuge from the forethought of grief.
"Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul."
How an ancient survivor of the unsurvivable became a triumph of the human spirit in a divided world.
"By reaching beyond the brain... we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively — to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone."
Life is an ongoing expedition into the brambled tendrilled wilderness of ourselves, continually stymied by all we mistake for a final destination — success, superhuman strength, the love of another. Along the way, we keep confusing experiment and exploration.…
In praise of "the gaiety of those who have nothing more to lose and so excel at giving."
"And it is so simple... You will instantly find how to live."
"We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us."
What makes life so disorienting is that its greatest revelations and greatest transformations are inarticulable. William James knew this when he listed ineffability as the first of the four features of transcendent experiences. Everything beautiful and meaning…
"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE by Maria Popova Don’t try to wash your tired hands clean from the bloodshed of your private wars. Just unclench the fist that has come to feel like home and let the story slip between your trembling fingers into the river of time, silve…
"Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course."
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know,'” the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska observed in her magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech. But despite all we know about the power of liminality and threshold states, we yearn for a firm…
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious…
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
"I’m so unused to being happy that I haven’t really come to terms with what it involves... I feel like a garden that’s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom."
“Nothing like this has ever happened before or will ever happen again,” a friend said to me about a lucky turn of events — a statement that struck me as touchingly self-negating: a recognition that life has violated her predictions about what is possible, imme…
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
"Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed."
You know it, that awful moment your coherent self-image shatters and a part of you, shadowy and untended, splits off to cause harm and havoc as the rest of you watches helplessly, wincing. You know the next moment, too — the desperate wish for an undo button y…
It is in relationships that we discover both our depths and our limits, there that we anneal ourselves and transcend ourselves, there that we are hurt the most and there that we find the most healing. But despite what a crucible of our emotional and spiritual…
"It is not easy to give closeness and freedom, safety plus danger."
"The emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us."
"You’ll long for me when I’m gone... You'll kiss the headstone of my grave... Kiss my face instead!"
“All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured,” one of the Moomins observes in Tove Jansson’s masterwork of philosophy disguised as a children’s book. It takes a great spaciousness and sobriety of spirit to be vitalized rat…
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."