Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:49

Excerpt #1, from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

…in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether? And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing. When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet. Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion. For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall…

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Excerpt #2, from The Influence of the Stars: A book of old world lore, by Rosa Baughan

…the Mount. When the Line of Life is long, well-formed, slightly coloured and goes all round the thumb, it indicates a long life and free from serious illness; but when the line is wide and pale in colour, it indicates bad health; when it is short, it means early death. If the Line of Life is broken on one hand, but is marked in a continuous line on the other, these signs indicate an illness of a very serious nature; but if the broken line should appear in both hands, it means death at the epoch corresponding with the place on the line where the break occurs. When the Line of Life is not clearly defined, but is formed by a sort of chain of small lines, it indicates continuous small illnesses. When the Line of Life, instead of starting from the side of the hand, takes its rise in the Mount of Jupiter, which is sometimes, but rarely, the case, it indicates a life of successful ambition, honours and celebrity–qualities given by the influence of Jupiter. If the Line of Life joins the Line of the Heart and the Line of the Head, it indicates grave misfortune or violent death, by which the ancients probably meant to infer that when the heart and the head are dominated by merely vital instincts, the life is menaced by misfortune, but, when the Line of Life is very far from the Line of Head, it…

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Excerpt #3, from Emma, by Jane Austen

…woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother’s place, but without a mother’s affection to blind her. It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission. Had she been a person of consequence herself, he would have come I dare say; and it would not have signified whether he did or no. Can you think your friend behindhand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to herself? No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very ‘amiable,’ have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people: nothing really amiable about him.” “You seem determined to think ill of him.” “Me!—not at all,” replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; “I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal; that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.” “Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and agreeable. We must not be nice and ask for all the virtues into the…

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Excerpt #4, from A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

…quickly, it sends forth a similar light. Q. Does HEAT ALWAYS produce LIGHT? A. No: the heat of a stack of hay, or reeking dunghill, though very great, is not sufficient to produce light. Q. Why is a YELLOW FLAME brighter than a RED HOT COAL? A. Because yellow rays always produce the greatest amount of light; though red rays produce the greatest amount of heat. Q. Why is the LIGHT of a fire MORE INTENSE sometimes than at others? A. The intensity of fire-light depends upon the whiteness to which the carbon is reduced, by combustion. If the carbon be white hot, its combustion is perfect, and the light intense; if not, the light is obscured by smoke. Q. Why will not CINDERS BLAZE, as well as FRESH coals? A. The flame of coals is made chiefly by hydrogen gas. As soon as this gas is consumed, the hot cinders produce only an invisible gas, called carbonic acid. Q. Where does the hydrogen gas of a fire come from? A. The fuel is decomposed (by combustion) into its simple elements, carbon and hydrogen gas. (see p. 33) Q. Why does not a FIRE BLAZE on a FROSTY NIGHT, so long as it does upon another night?…

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Excerpt #5, from An Introduction to the History of Science, by Walter Libby

…(B) Imagination Poesy (C) Memory History ————————————————————————— Philosophia prima, or sapience —–+—+——–+———————-+——————————— (A) | | | Civil Philosophy | Intercourse | N | | (Standards of | Business | a | | right in:) | Government | t | Man +—————+——+——————————— | u | | Philosophy | Body | Medicine, Athletics, etc. | r | | of Humanity +——+——————————— | a | | (Anthropology)| | Logic | l | | | Soul | | | | | | Ethics | P +——–+————-+-+——+——–+———-+————- | h | | | Physics | Concrete | | i | | | (Material and | | M | l | | | Secondary | Abstract | a | o | | | Causes) | | t | s | Nature | Speculative | | | h | o | | | Metaphysics | Concrete | e…

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Excerpt #6, from Norman Ten Hundred, by A. Stanley Blicq

…nearly unmans you. With fast-thumping heart you hear the approach of guttural Hun voices … DOWN and QUIET. At last calm thinking points out that yon burning house is in your own lines. Make for it and all is well. Aye. Scouts, does the pulse quicken even now? What is the thin veneer of a mere nine hundred years semi-civilisation? Two thousand years before the Conquest the fierce warrior Northmen lived by the might of the halbert, fighters one and all from the days when the war-inspired mother croned of the battle-axe to her babe. And in the Normans was that Norse spirit dormant; but one night of such hardship as yet undreamt of had sufficed for an awakening. In the dawn they looked out with nearly bloodshot eyes towards the German front. He would counter-attack, would he? Let him come! He came! They poured one long volley into the long-coated line. It wavered, broke, thinned. At the junction with the Middlesex an Englishman gazed in unfeigned astonishment at the ugly, set features of his Norman companion. “But,” he said, “they might have wanted to be prisoners.” “Oh.” Ozanne grunted, “don’t want none,” and squinting down the sights let loose another trio. “This,” he added, “is the Great Undertaking.” “Yes, well?” “I am the undertaker. For my job … must ’ave bodies … and I,”…

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Excerpt #7, from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, by John Stuart Mill

…the sum of its parts are equals. The sums of equal things are equals. The differences of equal things are equals. There are no other original formulæ to prove equality. For inferring inequality we have the following: A whole and its parts are unequals. The sums of equal things and unequal things are unequals. The differences of equal things and unequal things are unequals. In all, eight formulæ. The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle do not obviously come within any of these. The formulæ specify certain marks of equality and of inequality, but the angles can not be perceived intuitively to have any of those marks. On examination it appears that they have; and we ultimately succeed in bringing them within the formula, “The differences of equal things are equal.” Whence comes the difficulty of recognizing these angles as the differences of equal things? Because each of them is the difference not of one pair only, but of innumerable pairs of angles; and out of these we had to imagine and select two, which could either be intuitively perceived to be equals, or possessed some of the marks of equality set down in the various formulæ. By an exercise of ingenuity, which, on the part of the first inventor, deserves to be regarded as considerable, two pairs of angles were hit upon, which united these requisites. First, it could be perceived intuitively that their differences were the angles at the base; and, secondly, they possessed one of the marks of equality, namely, coincidence…

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Excerpt #8, from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith

…interest of agriculture. The works constructed by the ancient sovereigns of Egypt, for the proper distribution of the waters of the Nile, were famous in antiquity, and the ruined remains of some of them are still the admiration of travellers. Those of the same kind which were constructed by the ancient sovereigns of Indostan, for the proper distribution of the waters of the Ganges, as well as of many other rivers, though they have been less celebrated, seem to have been equally great. Both countries, accordingly, though subject occasionally to dearths, have been famous for their great fertility. Though both were extremely populous, yet, in years of moderate plenty, they were both able to export great quantities of grain to their neighbours.

The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious aversion to the sea; and as the Gentoo religion does not permit its followers to light a fire, nor consequently to dress any victuals, upon the water, it, in effect, prohibits them from all distant sea voyages. Both the Egyptians and Indians must have depended almost altogether upon the navigation of other nations for the exportation of their surplus produce; and this dependency, as it must have confined the market, so it must have discouraged the increase of this surplus produce. It must have discouraged, too, the increase of the manufactured produce, more than that of the rude produce….

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Excerpt #9, from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

…Clamour’d the live-long night. Some say the earth Was feverous, and did shake. MACBETH. ’Twas a rough night. LENNOX…. My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it. Enter Macduff. MACDUFF. O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! MACBETH, LENNOX. What’s the matter? MACDUFF. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ th’ building. MACBETH. What is’t you say? the life? LENNOX….

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Excerpt #10, from Dave Dashaway, Air Champion; Or, Wizard Work in the Clouds, by Roy Rockwood

…Bruce. “I felt sure that sooner or later some one would suspect or identify me. It wasn’t safe for my sister. I didn’t know what to do, for what little I had earned wouldn’t take us far. Then came my big luck,” and the face of the speaker became radiant. “Tell it,” directed Hiram, on the edge with curiosity. “Some one had stolen an automobile from the village banker,” went on Bruce. “I had heard of it. I had read the posters giving the number and make of the machine, and offering a hundred dollars as a reward for its recovery. Just think of it! that very day an invalid lady I had chopped some wood for, asked me if I could get her a bunch of water lilies. I made a few inquiries of some boys I met. They directed me to a swamp about two miles from the town. I found a fine bed of the lilies, and was wading out with an armful, when down among a nest of reeds, where it had been run by the ride-stealers was the missing automobile.” “That was fine,” remarked Hiram. “I guess you got back to town on the double quick.” “I did for a fact,” agreed Bruce. “And inside of two hours I had the reward in my pocket. Oh but I felt rich! I went to the matron of the home and told her my whole story for the first time. She not only thought I had better get Lois to some safer place, and further away from Hillshore, but gave me a letter to a relative living on a farm…

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Excerpt #11, from The Chemistry of Plant Life, by Roscoe Wilfred Thatcher

…successfully duplicated in vitro in the laboratory. Assuming, then, that formaldehyde is the first photosynthetic product in the process of the production of carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide, the simple empirical equation for this transformation would be H_{2}O + CO_{2} = CH_{2}O + O_{2}. It is apparent, however, that the process is not so simple as this hypothetical reaction would indicate, as water and carbon dioxide can hardly be conceived to react together in any such simple way as this. Various theories as to the exact nature of the steps through which the chemical combinations proceed have been advanced. A discussion of the experimental evidence upon which these are based and of the conclusions which seem to be justified from these experimental studies is presented below. The only value which may be attached to the empirical equation just presented is that it does accurately represent the facts that a volume of oxygen, equal to that of the carbon dioxide consumed in the process, is liberated and that formaldehyde is the synthetical product of the reactions involved. It should be noted, in this connection, that formaldehyde is a powerful plant poison and that few, if any, plant tissues can withstand the toxic effect of this substance when it is present in any considerable concentration. Hence, it is necessary to this whole conception of the…

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Excerpt #12, from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories, by Chekhov, by Chekhov

…“There is a wind, though. . . . Brrr!” said Samoylenko. “There must be a pretty stiff storm on the sea now! You are not going off at a nice time, Koyla.” “I’m not afraid of sea-sickness.” “That’s not the point. . . . I only hope these rascals won’t upset you. You ought to have crossed in the agent’s sloop. Where’s the agent’s sloop?” he shouted to the boatmen. “It has gone, Your Excellency.” “And the Customs-house boat?” “That’s gone, too.” “Why didn’t you let us know,” said Samoylenko angrily. “You dolts!” “It’s all the same, don’t worry yourself . . .” said Von Koren. “Well, good-bye. God keep you.” Samoylenko embraced Von Koren and made the sign of the cross over him three times. “Don’t forget us, Kolya. . . . Write. . . . We shall look out for you next spring.” “Good-bye, deacon,” said Von Koren, shaking hands with the deacon. “Thank you for your company and for your pleasant conversation. Think about the expedition.” “Oh Lord, yes! to the ends of the earth,” laughed the deacon. “I’ve…

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