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Maria Popova Ping Zhu children's books art illustration Enchanted Lion science biology genetics love nonfiction children's books children's nonfiction history and literature lit science and technology

The Snail with the Right Heart — a love story, a science story, a story about the poetry of existence, about time and chance, genetics and gender, life and death, evolution and infinity, about not mistaking difference for defect, about recognizing diversity as nature’s wellspring of resilience and beauty.

Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera love letters letters love quote culture art art history women in art

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera 90 years ago today. Her gorgeous handwritten love letters to him.

Robert Graves lit quotes quote love

Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person’s integrity and truth.

Robert Graves, born on this day in 1895, on love and lust.

Emily Dickinson love letters poetry lit history and literature love LGBT history LGBT women's history biography letters

Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to?… I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you… feel that now I must have you… Why, Susie, it seems to me as if my absent Lover was coming home so soon — and my heart must be so busy, making ready for him.

Emily Dickinson’s electric love letters to Susan Gilbert.

W.H. Auden poetry quote love lit history and literature Figuring

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

The story behind one of the loveliest and most profound poems ever written – “The More Loving One” by W.H. Auden – with a beautiful reading by astrophysicist Janna Levin.

Werner Heisenberg physics Nobel laureates love letters love quotes thought and opinion science and technology culture and society science

Werner Heisenberg Falls in Love — the love letters of the Nobel-winning pioneer of quantum mechanics and originator of the uncertainty principle.

Bertrand Russell philosophy love thought and opinion history and literature lit

For beloved philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell’s birthday, his timeless wisdom on love, sex, what “the good life” really means, and how to stop limiting our happiness.

Rollo May philosophy psychology culture and society thought and opinion love

The great existential psychologist Rollo May on love and will in times of radical transition – written half a century ago, spectacularly applicable to our present predicament.

James Baldwin LGBT history and literature advice lit love culture and society Gay Pride

James Baldwin on same-sex love, the trap of labels, and his advice on coming out – the beloved writer’s most personal interview.

Bertrand Russell philosophy thought and opinion love culture and society

Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell on power-knowledge vs. love-knowledge, the two faces of science, and what makes life satisfying.

Bill Hayes Oliver Sacks love science and technology science chemistry

Oliver Sacks’s periodic table collection, from Bill Hayes’s extraordinary love letter to Dr. Sacks, New York City, and love itself.

Adam Phillips psychology philosophy love Valentine's Day culture and society thought and opinion

All love stories are frustration stories… To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration that you didn’t know you had.

For Valentine’s Day, the paradoxical psychology of why frustration is necessary for satisfaction in love.

Alain de Botton love On Being interviews thought and opinion culture and society

“Love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is.”

Fantastic On Being conversation with Alain de Botton, who has written with uncommon insight and sensitivity about the central paradox of love and what makes a good communicator in romantic relationships.

Martha Nussbaum love culture and society thought and opinion philosophy

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s incompleteness theorem of the heart – fascinating read on the insufficiency of the intellect in discerning the heart’s truth and how we know whether we actually love somebody.

Kahlil Gibran Mary Haskell love love letters history and literature lit culture and society

When I am unhappy, dear Mary, I read your letters. When the mist overwhelms the ‘I’ in me, I take two or three letters out of the little box and reread them. They remind me of my true self. They make me overlook all that is not high and beautiful in life. Each and every one of us, dear Mary, must have a resting place somewhere. The resting place of my soul is a beautiful grove where my knowledge of you lives.

The almost unbearably beautiful love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell.