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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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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 · 1h
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 · 3h
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 · 6h
"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 · 8h
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 · 12h
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 · 13h
"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 · 15h
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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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 23h
At the link, this week's oasis of small sanities in a single place – the 3 elements of the good life, Rudyard Kipling on writing, and a splendid poem of instructions for being more alive : mailchi.mp/themarginali...
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

Jack Kerouac on kindness, the self illusion, and the "Golden Eternity" – wonderful letter to his first wife turned lifelong friend www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/12/j...
Jack Kerouac on Kindness, the Self Illusion, and the “Golden Eternity”
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Starlings and the magic of murmurations – a stunning watercolor serenade to one of Earth's great wonders www.themarginalian.org/2023/10/24/w...
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living Wonders
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped…
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up … our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.”

Maya Angelou on home, belonging, and (not) growing up www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/16/m...
Maya Angelou on Home, Belonging, and (Not) Growing Up
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up … our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.”
www.themarginalian.org
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mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Bats, the pitfalls of prediction, and the triumph of the possible over the probable www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/11/b...
Bats, the Pitfalls of Prediction, and the Triumph of the Possible Over the Probable
Prediction is the sharpest tool the human animal has devised — the chisel with which we sculpted survival out of chance, the fulcrum by which we lifted civilization out of survival. Among the…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Why haters hate – Kierkegaard explains the psychology of bullying and online trolling a century and a half before the internet www.themarginalian.org/2014/10/13/k...
Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Bullying and Online Trolling in 1847
“Showing that they don’t care about me, or caring that I should know they don’t care about me, still denotes dependence.”
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Virginia Woolf on love www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/09/v...
Virginia Woolf on Love
“I think we moderns lack love,” Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) diagnosed us in the first year of our deadliest war. The paradox is that when we lack something lo…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Pioneering poet H.D. on the two kinds of seeing www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/02/h...
Vision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind Consciousness
“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of our senses are being a…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
The paradox of knowing who you are and what you want – Cristina Campo on fairy tales, time, and the meaning of maturity www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/29/c...
The Paradox of Knowing Who You Are and What You Want: Cristina Campo on Fairy Tales, Time, and the Meaning of Maturity
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales,” Einstein reportedly told one mother who wished for her son to become a scientist. “If you want them to be ver…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Nobel laureate Doris Lessing on how to read a book and how to read the world www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/17/d...
Doris Lessing on How to Read a Book and How to Read the World
Born in Iran and raised in Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing (October 22, 1919–November 17, 2013) was fourteen when she dropped out of school and eighty-eight when she won the Nobel Prize for smelting …
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Things Become Other Things – a gorgeous meditation on walking, forgiveness, and belonging, lensed through the mountains of Japan www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/09/t...
Things Become Other Things: Walking, Forgiveness, and Belonging in the Mountains of Japan
Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we fall and then we catch ourselves, we choose to go one way and not another. The foot falls and worl…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Dinner with Mr. Darcy – recipes from Jane Austen's letters and novels www.themarginalian.org/2014/02/25/d...
Dinner with Mr. Darcy: Recipes from Jane Austen’s Novels and Letters
Mr. Bingley’s white soup, Lady Middleton’s apricot marmalade, Margaret Dods’s pigeon pie, and more literary treats from Georgian England.
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Tired of letting algorithms divine who you are, define what you see, and distract you with ads? Try the Marginalian newsletter—an oasis of undistracted inspiration and illumination, free, ad-free, algorithm-free, fully human since 2006: themarginalian.org/newsletter
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”

Patti Smith on love, loss, time, and transformation www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/19/p...
Patti Smith on Time, Transformation, and How the Radiance of Love Redeems the Rupture of Loss
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Steinbeck and the difficult art of the friend breakup www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/18/j...
Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup
“I can’t consider you a friend when out of every contact there comes some intentionally wounding thing.”
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Emily Dickinson's stunning ode to resilience, animated www.themarginalian.org/2018/09/18/w...
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark: Emily Dickinson’s Stunning Ode to Resilience, Animated
A timeless serenade to finding light amid the “Evenings of the Brain.”
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Orcas and the price of consciousness – lessons in love and loss from Earth's most successful predator www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/21/o...
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are…
www.themarginalian.org
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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 3d
How to see more clearly and love more purely – an Iris Murdoch gem www.themarginalian.org/2024/08/05/i...
How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to un…
www.themarginalian.org
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