Maria Popova Quotes

I don't subscribe to the tortured genius myth. I don't think it's necessary to suffer in order to create. But I do think that out of what we have suffered and do suffer comes that restlessness to find meaning to find beauty to find wonder to give voice and shape to what we feel.

the most critical thing an aspiring writer can do, I think, is to always know why he or she is doing it and for whom. It’s fine to find gratification in the approval of others or in financial success or in any other extrinsic reward, but it’s toxic to make that approval or prestige the motive to write.

What invigorated Maria Mitchell that evening, and what would drive her for the remaining decades of her life, was not the king’s medal, nor the luster of worldwide recognition, but the sheer thrill of discovery — the ecstasy of having personally chipped a small fragment of knowledge from the immense
monolith of the unknown, that elemental motive force of every sincere scientist.

... the most significant event of her intellectual and emotional development arrived the way most transformative things enter out lives — through the back door of the mansion of our plans.

It is not cowardice but courage to acknowledge the superior role chance plays in steering the course of life, and at the same time to take responsibility for the margin of difference our personal choices do make within the parameters of chance.

Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love?

We navigate the unknown frontiers of the social universe through a sextant of existing relationships — nearly every new person we meet is within only a few degrees of separation from someone we already know. But every once in a while, pure chance intercedes to remind us that whatever structures of control we may put into place, however much we may mistake the illusion of choice for the fact of choice, randomness is the reigning monarch of the universe.

The gap between intention and interpretation is always rife with wrongs, especially when writer and reader occupy vastly different strata of emotional maturity and intellectual sophistication.

There is no overstating the triumph of having remained motivated by beauty in taking down the ugliest malignancies of human nature’s grasp for power.

What is love, after all, if not an affectionate acceptance of the lover's full spectrum of being, the silly along with the solemn?

To live in a world without forgiveness, she intimates, is to make of life an instant fossil record

In the darkest times, we are the most starved for delight - for the self-permission for delight.

We are who we are in large part because of where we are and when we are. But lives of courage and consequence remap the locus of spirit and possibility for generations to come.

Boredom is not only an adaptive emotion but a vital one with its related faculties of contemplation, solitude, and stillness. It is essential for the life of the mind and the life of the spirit.

If you're not a little embarrassed of who you were and how you lived, perhaps the process of growth isn't quite working.