Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:53

Excerpt #1, from The Republic of Plato, by Plato

…good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble. Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art of medicine thus far only. 407A Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation? Quite true, he said. But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say that he has any specially appointed work which he must perform, if he would live. He is generally supposed to have nothing to do. Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a livelihood he should practise virtue? Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat sooner. [Sidenote: The slow cure equally an impediment to the mechanical arts, to the practice of virtue] Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said; but rather ask ourselves: Is the practice of virtue obligatory on 407B the rich man, or can he live without it? And if obligatory on him, then let us raise a further question, whether this dieting of disorders, which is an impediment to the application of the mind in carpentering and the…

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Excerpt #2, from A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells

…known as the wave of Brythonic Celts. From them the Welsh derive their language. THE MOUND OF NIPPUR THE MOUND OF NIPPUR The site of a city which recent excavations have proved to date from at least as early as 5000 B.C., and probably 1000 years earlier Photo: Underwood & Underwood Kindred Celtic peoples were pressing southward into Spain and coming into contact not only with the heliolithic Basque people who still occupied the country but with the Semitic Phœnician colonies of the sea coast. A closely allied series of tribes, the Italians, were making their way down the still wild and wooded Italian peninsula. They did not always conquer. In the eighth century B.C. Rome appears in history, a trading town on the Tiber, inhabited by Aryan Latins but under the rule of Etruscan nobles and kings. At the other extremity of the Aryan range there was a similar progress southward of similar tribes. Aryan peoples, speaking Sanskrit, had come down through the western passes into North India long before 1000 B.C. There they came into contact with a primordial brunette civilization, the Dravidian civilization, and learnt much from it. Other Aryan tribes seem to have spread over the mountain masses of…

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Excerpt #3, from Anne of the Island, by L. M. Montgomery

…minister at all.” “But if you had to?” persisted Dora. “I’d call it a Thomas pussy,” said Davy. “I think ‘gentleman cat’ would be more polite,” reflected Dora. “You thinking!” retorted Davy with withering scorn. Davy was not feeling comfortable, though he would have died before he admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges. After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. At this inconvenient moment Davy remembered that when he had torn his new school pants the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended them beautifully and never said a word to Marilla about them. But Davy’s cup of iniquity was not yet full. He was to discover that one sin demands another to cover it. They had dinner with Mrs. Lynde that day, and the first thing she asked Davy was, “Were all your class in Sunday School today?” “Yes’m,” said Davy with a gulp. “All were there—’cept one.” “Did you say your Golden Text and catechism?” “Yes’m.”…

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Excerpt #4, from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, by William Shakespeare

…If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say ‘This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’ So should my papers, yellow’d with their age, Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage And stretched metre of an antique song: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice,–in it, and in my rhyme. XVIII Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,…

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Excerpt #5, from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

…70 (return) [ Inter Romanos negotia causarum Romanis legibus praecipimus terminari. Such are the words of a general constitution promulgated by Clotaire, the son of Clovis, the sole monarch of the Franks (in tom. iv. p. 116) about the year 560.] 71 (return) [ This liberty of choice has been aptly deduced (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. 2) from the constitution of Lothaire I. (Leg. Langobard. l. ii. tit. lvii. in Codex Lindenbrog. p. 664;) though the example is too recent and partial. From a various reading in the Salic law, (tit. xliv. not. xlv.) the Abbe de Mably (tom. i. p. 290-293) has conjectured, that, at first, a Barbarian only, and afterwards any man, (consequently a Roman,) might live according to the law of the Franks. I am sorry to offend this ingenious conjecture by observing, that the stricter sense (Barbarum) is expressed in the reformed copy of Charlemagne; which is confirmed by the Royal and Wolfenbuttle MSS. The looser interpretation (hominem) is authorized only by the MS. of Fulda, from from whence Heroldus published his edition. See the four original texts of the Salic law in tom. iv. p. 147, 173, 196, 220. * Note: Gibbon appears to have doubted the evidence on which this “liberty of choice” rested. His doubts have been confirmed by the researches of M. Savigny, who has not…

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Excerpt #6, from Recollections and impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler, by Arthur Jerome Eddy

…long, slender wand, like a mahl-stick, for a cane, and was conspicuous wherever he went, not only on account of his diminutive size, but also by his stick and dress. An attendant at an exhibition once wished to relieve him of his cane, but he exclaimed: “Oh, no, my man! I keep this for the critics.” * * * * * The following, by a London correspondent, is a very good description, though of late years he had abandoned the cane and his hair was somewhat grayer: “They say Whistler is fifty-six. But years have nothing to do with him. He is as young in spirit, as lithe in body, as dapper in ‘get-up’ as he was twenty years ago. “Is there another man in London with such vitality as Whistler has,–I care not what his age,–another so dainty, another so sprightly in wit? Do you see that dapper gentleman coming along Cheyne Walk, silk hat with very tall crown and very straight brim; habit apparently broadcloth (frock coat), fitting to perfection a supple figure; feet small as a girl’s,–an American girl’s; hands delicately gloved in yellow; in the right hand a lithe, slim wand, twice as long as a walking stick; glass in eye; black moustache and…

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Excerpt #7, from Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo

…slowly, with drooping head, in an attitude of reflection and sadness. The winter had thinned out the forest, so that Thénardier did not lose them from sight, although he kept at a good distance. The man turned round from time to time, and looked to see if he was being followed. All at once he caught sight of Thénardier. He plunged suddenly into the brushwood with Cosette, where they could both hide themselves. “The deuce!” said Thénardier, and he redoubled his pace. The thickness of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When the man had reached the densest part of the thicket, he wheeled round. It was in vain that Thénardier sought to conceal himself in the branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him an uneasy glance, then elevated his head and continued his course. The inn-keeper set out again in pursuit. Thus they continued for two or three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more; he saw the inn-keeper. This time he gazed at him with so sombre an air that Thénardier decided that it was “useless” to proceed further. Thénardier retraced his steps. CHAPTER XI—NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY Jean Valjean was not dead. When he fell into the sea, or rather, when he threw himself into it, he was not ironed, as we have seen. He swam under water until he reached a…

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Excerpt #8, from A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

…quiver of a muscle did he betray the slightest emotion; only he did not laugh as Tal Hajus gleefully described her death struggles. From that moment on he was the cruelest of the cruel, and I am awaiting the day when he shall win the goal of his ambition, and feel the carcass of Tal Hajus beneath his foot, for I am as sure that he but waits the opportunity to wreak a terrible vengeance, and that his great love is as strong in his breast as when it first transfigured him nearly forty years ago, as I am that we sit here upon the edge of a world-old ocean while sensible people sleep, John Carter.” “And your father, Sola, is he with us now?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “but he does not know me for what I am, nor does he know who betrayed my mother to Tal Hajus. I alone know my father’s name, and only I and Tal Hajus and Sarkoja know that it was she who carried the tale that brought death and torture upon her he loved.” We sat silent for a few moments, she wrapped in the gloomy thoughts of her terrible past, and I in pity for the poor creatures whom the heartless, senseless customs of their race had doomed to loveless lives of cruelty and of hate. Presently she spoke. “John Carter, if ever a real man walked the cold, dead bosom of Barsoom you are one. I know that I can trust you, and because the knowledge may someday help you or him or Dejah Thoris or myself, I am going to tell…

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Excerpt #9, from Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, by J. Franklin Jameson

…about the fourteenth of April last past, about twelve Leagues South East of the Isle of Sables,[18] he was met and taken by Phillips the Pyrate, who demanded and took from him his vessel, being a better Sailor than that they were in. That he knows both the Prisoners at the Bar, saw them on board the Pyrate when he was taken, but did not see them armed, that neither of them went on board vessels when they were taken. That John Filmore, the day after that this Depont. was taken, Declared his mind to him and the minds of several others, to rise upon the Pyrates in order to subdue them and Endeavour their escape. That Edward Cheesman, upon the rising, threw Nutt the Master of the Pyrate over board, That John Filmore struck Burrell the Boatswain on the head with a broad ax, whilst the Depont. and others Dispatcht the Captain and Gunner.[19] [Footnote 18: Sable Island, south of Nova Scotia.] [Footnote 19: John Phillips and James or Joseph Sparks. “Phillips’ and Burrill’s heads were brought to Boston in pickle”; Diary of Jeremiah Bumstead, May 3, 1724, in N.E. Hist. Gen. Reg., XV. 201.] John Masters, late Mate of the Sloop Content, Deposed That on or about the 27th of October last, he was taken out of the sd sloop Content, George Barrow Master, in the Lattitude of Barbado’s, by the Pyrate Phillips, was kept by the Pyrates four Months and then…

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Excerpt #10, from Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

…But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput. THIS Uninhabited Island Is off Cape Gardafui, By the Beaches of Socotra And the Pink Arabian Sea: But it’s hot–too hot from Suez For the likes of you and me Ever to go In a P. and O. And call on the Cake-Parsee! HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. ‘Member it wasn’t the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the ‘sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and ‘sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were ‘sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the ‘sclusivest…

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Excerpt #11, from The Principles of the Art of Conversation, by J. P. Mahaffy

…So it was said of Phæax, the contemporary of Alcibiades and Cleon, λαλεῑν ἄριστος, ἀδυνατὠτατος λἐγειν—a capital talker, but the worst of speakers. § 5. The analogy, therefore, being established, we may feel tolerably certain of the following results, which should be stated at the outset in order to allay any vain or excessive expectations: (1) no teaching of the art of conversation by specimens is possible. Even in rhetoric this is very difficult, and yet rhetoric is busied about weighty topics which must often recur in the same form. But in the case of conversation, except to point out some notable examples in great authors, any teaching by special cases is quite illusory. It would at once tempt the learner to force the train of the discourse into the vein he had practised, and to force conversation is in other words to spoil it. (2) As in logic and in rhetoric, we may be certain that all the general rules, when stated, will be perfectly obvious. The notion of any of these sciences being mysteries, whereby a secret or magic power is to be acquired, is only fit for the dark ages. The broad foundations of logic are nothing but truisms; the rules of rhetoric are founded on these truisms, combined with psychological observations neither subtle nor deep. So we may be certain that the laws of good conversation, being such as can be practised by all, are no witchery, but something simple and commonplace,…

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Excerpt #12, from The Old East Indiamen, by E. Keble Chatterton

…The holder of a protection was thus made immune from arrest by a press-gang. It was a document which gave the name of the man, his age, stature, stated whether he wore a wig or his own hair, and other particulars of identification. No man with this authorisation could be forced into his Majesty’s service, but it was valid only for three months or the period written thereon. There is preserved an original protection certificate in the archives of the Public Record Office, and it is a quaint document which must have been very keenly appreciated by its eighteenth-century owner. On the other hand, when the East India Company had lost some of their seamen by desertion, they would petition the Admiralty to allow naval men to be lent. Every student of history is aware of the unfortunate friction which existed at this time between the officers of the Royal Navy and the officers of the Mercantile Marine. Happily in the present century this slow-dying spirit is almost extinct. In my volume, “King’s Cutters and Smugglers,” I showed what altercations used to arise, what petty jealousies existed between the officers of the Revenue cutters and those of his Majesty’s navy. The captains and officers of the East India Company were often indebted to the protection and assistance of naval officers, but the latter were often overbearing in the exercise of their duties, and despised any seaman who was not in the King’s…

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