philosophy

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the […]

“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on

It says something about our species that we have eradicated smallpox and invented vaccines and antibiotics for yellow fever and

“Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in

Yes, we spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. The boundary

By Maria Popova Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a

Every once in a while, the curtain of consciousness we mistake for reality parts and we glimpse what glows beyond

How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular

When a recent bout of illness sent me sulking with indignant disappointment at the ruin of long laid plans, I