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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
9.1K followers 21 following 2.8K posts
Creator of The Marginalian (once upon a time called Brain Pickings). Lover of books and tress. Petter of moss. Wonderer. Also: almanacofbirds.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · Apr 19
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I shared the morning of my fortieth birthday. They are now a book of cards:
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I ori…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 6h
Joy — like music, like love — is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/04/m...
A Defense of Joy
One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite th…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 8h
On Hannah Arendt's birthday, her timeless meditation on what forgiveness really means www.themarginalian.org/2021/07/14/h...
The Antidote to the Irreversibility of Life: Hannah Arendt on What Forgiveness Really Means
“Forgiving… is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 11h
Hannah Arendt, born on this day in 1906, on human nature vs. culture, what equality really means, and how language confers reality upon our existence www.themarginalian.org/2017/04/04/h...
Hannah Arendt on Human Nature vs. Culture, What Equality Really Means, and How Our Language Confers Reality Upon Our Experience
“An experience makes its appearance only when it is being said. And unless it is said it is, so to speak, non-existent.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 13h
Albert Camus on the will to live and the most important question of existence www.themarginalian.org/2016/11/07/c...
Albert Camus on the Will to Live and the Most Important Question of Existence
“The body’s judgment is as good as the mind’s… We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 15h
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

The life and legacy of e.e. cummings, born 131 years ago today, in a lovely illustrated tribute www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/30/e...
Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story of E. E. Cummings and His Creative Bravery
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 20h
We Are Free to Change the World – Hannah Arendt (born on this day in 1906), the power of defiant goodwill, and the art of beginning afresh www.themarginalian.org/2024/03/15/w...
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of Beginning Afresh
“It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and compl…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 21h
On E.E. Cummings's birthday, his timeless manifesto for the courage to be yourself: www.themarginalian.org/2017/09/25/e...
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 22h
Between owls and roses – Mary Oliver on the meaning of life www.themarginalian.org/2020/09/08/m...
Between Owls and Roses: Mary Oliver on the Meaning of Life
“The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
How to disappear – the art of listening to silence in a noisy world
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
"At the end of my suffering
there was a door."

A benediction of a poem by Nobel laureate Louise Glück, who left us two years ago today www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/29/l...
The Wild Iris: Nobel Laureate Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering
“Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
The Little Gardener – a tender illustrated parable about the power of working with purpose and love www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/10/t...
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
A stunning love poem to life at the horizon of death from Nobel laureate Louise Glück, who returned her borrowed stardust two years ago today www.themarginalian.org/2020/10/11/l...
Nobel Laureate Louise Glück’s Love Poem to Life at the Horizon of Death
A subtle, stunning serenade to the lifelong hunger for self-love and self-forgiveness.
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
How to be a good explorer in the lifelong expedition to yourself www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/13/p...
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Einstein's wonderful letter of solidarity to his pal Marie Curie when she (yes, even she) was besieged by haters
www.themarginalian.org/2016/04/19/e...
Don’t Heed the Haters: Albert Einstein’s Wonderful Letter of Support to Marie Curie in the Midst of Scandal
“If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Turning loneliness and loss into wonder – how the Victorian visionary Marianne North revolutionized art and science with her botanical illustrations, for which she traveled to the ends of the world and nearly lost her life www.themarginalian.org/2023/01/23/m...
Turning Loss and Loneliness into Wonder: How the Victorian Visionary Marianne North Revolutionized Art and Science with Her Botanical Paintings
A vibrant foray into “a perfect world of wonders” fueled by the bittersweet dimension of life.
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
How memory makes us and breaks us – the Rashomon effect and the science of how memories form and falter in the brain
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
"Looking... is a practice, a form of attention paid, which is, for many, the essence of prayer."

Poet Lia Purpura on the art of noticing: www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/04/l...
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Life Is Like Blue Jelly – Margaret Mead discovers the meaning of life in a dream www.themarginalian.org/2014/02/25/m...
Life Is Like Blue Jelly: Margaret Mead Discovers the Meaning of Existence in a Dream
Revelations from the dreamsome laboratory of the unconscious.
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Long live The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows – uncommonly lovely invented words for what we feel but cannot name, such as maru mori (“the heartbreaking simplicity of ordinary things”) and apolytus (“the moment you realize you are changing as a person") www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/12/d...
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
“Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
A superb poet's superb perspective on the paradox of "finding yourself" www.themarginalian.org/2017/06/07/r...
The Paradox of “Finding Yourself”
“The self is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth…”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
"You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive."

An inhale of a poem
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Bertrand Russell, who lived nearly a century through two world wards and won the Nobel Price, on how to grow old and what makes a fulfilling life: www.themarginalian.org/2018/07/03/h...
How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life
“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
An elixir of a poem for your Sunday www.themarginalian.org/2025/06/17/t...
The Whole of It
Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form of living against it and not with it — the pain of loss, aching for what has been and no l…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight."

A classic manifesto for the courage of being yourself: www.themarginalian.org/2017/09/25/e...
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Don't waste your greening life-force – the 12th-century polymath Hildegard of Bingen's enchanted ecology epochs ahead of its time www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/07/h...
Don’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology
The year is 1174. Gravity, oxygen, and electricity have not been discovered. Clocks, calculus, and the printing press have not been invented. Earth is the center of the universe, encircled by heave…
www.themarginalian.org
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