#Wisława Szymborska

Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings “I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” the Nobel-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska wrote in her stunning poem “Possibilities.” And why shouldn’t we? We are, after all, creatures pinned to scales of space and time far closer to those

Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings “For one human being to love another,” Rilke wrote to a young friend, “that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation.” Two generations later, the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska

Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings “Rivers run through our civilisations like strings through beads,” Olivia Laing wrote in her stunning meditation on life, loss, and the meaning of rivers. “There is a mystery about rivers that draws us to them, for they rise from hidden places and

Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings “We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry,” the great astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science, wrote in her diary in 1871. Nearly a century and