Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:15

Excerpt #1, from Anthem, by Ayn Rand

…Then we saw that the eyes of International 4-8818 were full to the lids with tears they dared not drop. They whispered, and their voice trembled, so that their words lost all shape: “The will of the Council is above all things, for it is the will of our brothers, which is holy. But if you wish it so, we shall obey you. Rather shall we be evil with you than good with all our brothers. May the Council have mercy upon both our hearts!” Then we walked away together and back to the Home of the Street Sweepers. And we walked in silence. Thus did it come to pass that each night, when the stars are high and the Street Sweepers sit in the City Theatre, we, Equality 7-2521, steal out and run through the darkness to our place. It is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown out and the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl under our seat and under the cloth of the tent. Later, it is easy to steal through the shadows and fall in line next to International 4-8818, as the column leaves the Theatre. It is dark in the streets and there are no men about, for no men may walk through the City when they have no mission to walk there. Each night, we run to the ravine, and we remove the stones which we have piled upon the iron grill to hide it from the men. Each…

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Excerpt #2, from An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde

…we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike. You dislike me. I am quite aware of that. And I have always detested you. And yet I have come here to do you a service. LADY CHILTERN. [Contemptuously.] Like the service you wished to render my husband last night, I suppose. Thank heaven, I saved him from that. MRS. CHEVELEY. [Starting to her feet.] It was you who made him write that insolent letter to me? It was you who made him break his promise? LADY CHILTERN. Yes. MRS. CHEVELEY. Then you must make him keep it. I give you till to-morrow morning—no more. If by that time your husband does not solemnly bind himself to help me in this great scheme in which I am interested— LADY CHILTERN. This fraudulent speculation— MRS. CHEVELEY. Call it what you choose. I hold your husband in the hollow of my hand, and if you are wise you will make him do what I tell him. LADY CHILTERN. [Rising and going towards her.] You are impertinent. What has my husband to do with you? With a woman like you? MRS. CHEVELEY [With a bitter laugh.] In this world like meets with like. It is because your husband is himself fraudulent and dishonest…

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Excerpt #3, from The Old East Indiamen, by E. Keble Chatterton

…Indiaman’s crew into the navy in the manner that we saw in an earlier chapter. As the crew had no desire to come under impressment, they at once hid, with the result that the privateer’s men had no difficulty in coming on board the Lord Eldon. The captain was below at the time, and hearing a noise and clamour came on deck to see what it was all about: and then to his amazement found that his ship was in the hands of the enemy. However, he was not one easily to be daunted, even by such a surprise as this. His life was made up of things unexpected, and knowing that his men were well drilled he called to them to repel boarders. They at once responded to the command and came out from their hiding-places, and after a sharp fight drove the invaders overboard. One Frenchman had even got possession of the Lord Eldon’s wheel, but the East Indiaman’s captain killed him with his own hand, cutting off his head with one stroke of the sword. In a very short time the privateer, who was now more surprised than the crew of the merchant ship, hurriedly made sail and disappeared into the fog. The incident well shows the fighting efficiency of the commanders and men of the Company’s vessels at this period. During the early part of the eighteenth century about a dozen or fifteen of the Company’s ships would sail to the East Indies from London, but this average gradually rose till, about the year 1779,…

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Excerpt #4, from Middlemarch, by George Eliot

…fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction? In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small cost. In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile echo of Dorothea’s vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the utmost the fulfilment of his designs.” The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate’s opinion as to the nature of his illness. He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had felt ill, replied,—“No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be taking my usual exercise.” When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty…

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Excerpt #5, from The Airship “Golden Hind”, by Percy F. Westerman

…cat: ‘/home/marc/Dropbox/Marc/books/Unsorted/pgbooks-for-excerpts/The Airship Golden’: No such file or directory cat: ‘Hind by Percy F. Westerman-39488-0.txt’: No such file or directory

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Excerpt #6, from Not that it Matters, by A. A. Milne

…Representative" promptly calls upon “the well-known Lepidopterist” to ask what HE thinks about it. But if he be of an established reputation, then his professional opinion is no longer sought. What the world is eager for now is to be told his views on Sunday Games, the Decadence of the Theatre or Bands in the Parks. The modern advertising provides a new scale of values. No doubt Mr. Pelman offers his celebrated hundred guineas’ fee equally to all his victims, but we may be pretty sure that in his business- like brain he has each one of them nicely labelled, a Gallant Soldier being good for so much new business, a titled Man of Letters being good for slightly less; and that real Fame is best measured by the number of times that one’s unbiased views on Pelmanism (or Tonics or Hair-Restorers) are considered to be worth reprinting. In this matter my friend Mandragon is doing nicely. For a suitable fee he is prepared to attribute his success to anything in reason, and his confession of faith can count upon a place in every full-page advertisement of the mixture, and frequently in the odd half-columns. I never quite understand why a tonic which has tightened up Mandragon’s fibres, or a Mind-Training System which has brought General Blank’s…

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Excerpt #7, from Einstein and the universe: A popular exposition of the famous theory, by Nordmann

…The bed on which I lie and the body which lies on it will increase in size to exactly the same extent. What sort of feelings will I have when I awake in the morning, in face of such an amazing transformation? Well, I shall know nothing about it. The most precise measurements would tell me nothing about the revolution, because the tape I use for measuring will have changed to the same extent as the objects I wish to measure. As a matter of fact, there would be no revolution except in the mind of those who reason as if space were absolute. If I have argued for a moment as they do, it was only in order to show more clearly that their position is contradictory.” It would be easy to develop Poincaré’s argument. If all the objects in the universe were to become, for instance, a thousand times taller, a thousand times broader, we should be quite unable to detect it, because we ourselves—our retina and our measuring rod—would be transformed to the same extent at the same time. Indeed, if all the things in the universe were to experience an absolutely irregular spatial deformation—if some invisible and all-powerful spirit were to distort the universe in any fashion, drawing it out as if it were rubber—we…

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Excerpt #8, from Anna Karenina, by graf Leo Tolstoy

…terror. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty in the mirror of Anna’s face she saw in him. What had become of his always self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly serene expression of his face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble submission and dread. “I would not offend you,” his eyes seemed every time to be saying, “but I want to save myself, and I don’t know how.” On his face was a look such as Kitty had never seen before. They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a better match, yet these words had all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed lost in fog in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused…

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Excerpt #9, from The 1992 CIA World Factbook, by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

…Supreme Court (Cour Supreme), High Constitutional Court (Haute Cour Constitutionnelle) Leaders: Chief of State: President Adm. Didier RATSIRAKA (since 15 June 1975) Head of Government: Prime Minister Guy RASANAMAZY (since 8 August 1991) Political parties and leaders: some 30 political parties now exist in Madagascar, the most important of which are the Advance Guard of the Malagasy Revolution (AREMA), Didier RATSIRAKA; Congress Party for Malagasy Independence (AKFM), RAKOTOVAO-ANDRIATIANA; Congress Party for Malagasy Independence-Revival (AKFM-R), Pastor Richard ANDRIAMANJATO; Movement for National Unity (VONJY), Dr. Marojama RAZANABAHINY; Malagasy Christian Democratic Union (UDECMA), Norbert ANDRIAMORASATA; Militants for the Establishment of a Proletarian Regime (MFM), Manandafy RAKOTONIRINA; National Movement for the Independence of Madagascar (MONIMA), Monja JAONA; National Union for the Defense of Democracy (UNDD), Albert ZAFY Suffrage: universal at age 18 Elections:…

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Excerpt #10, from Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde, by Oscar Wilde

…hair, and the memory of two childish lips bending down to kiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage. Later on had followed the marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a small town on the frontier between the two countries, and the grand public entry into Madrid with the customary celebration of high mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than usually solemn auto-da-fe, in which nearly three hundred heretics, amongst whom were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular arm to be burned. Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought, of his country, then at war with England for the possession of the empire of the New World. He had hardly ever permitted her to be out of his sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten, all grave affairs of State; and, with that terrible blindness that passion brings upon its servants, he had failed to notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered. When she died he was, for a time, like one bereft of reason. Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having caused the Queen’s…

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Excerpt #11, from Radio Active Substances, by Marie Curie

…chloride is only slightly soluble. Antimony and arsenic are found among the oxides only in the minutest quantity, their oxides having been dissolved by the soda. In order to obtain the very active sulphides, the following process was employed:—The solutions made strongly acid with hydrochloric acid were precipitated with sulphuretted hydrogen; the sulphides thus precipitated are very active, and are employed for the preparation of polonium; there remain in the solution substances not completely precipitated in presence of excess of hydrochloric acid (bismuth, lead, antimony). To complete the precipitation, the solution is diluted with water, and treated again with sulphuretted hydrogen, which gives a second precipitate of sulphides, much less active than the first, and which have generally been rejected. For the further purification of the sulphides, they are washed with ammonium sulphide, which removes the last remaining traces of antimony and arsenic. They are then washed with water and ammonium nitrate, and treated with dilute nitric acid. Complete solution never occurs; there is always an insoluble residue, more or less considerable, which can be treated afresh if it is judged expedient. The solution is reduced to a small volume and precipitated either by ammonia or by excess of water. In both cases the lead and the copper remain in solution; in the second case, a little bismuth, scarcely active at all, remains also in solution….

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Excerpt #12, from Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum

…Colombia, Mr. Hannibal, I found an old friend, and he referred affectionately to days in Manila when we were there together, he in the Southern Cross and I in the Northern Light, both ships as beautiful as their names. The Colombia had an abundance of fresh stores on board. The captain gave his steward some order, and I remember that the guileless young man asked me if I could manage, besides other things, a few cans of milk and a cheese. When I offered my Montevideo gold for the supplies, the captain roared like a lion and told me to put my money up. It was a glorious outfit of provisions of all kinds that I got. [Illustration: A contrast in lighting–the electric lights of the Colombia and the canoe fires of the Fortescue Indians.] Returning to the Spray, where I found all secure, I prepared for an early start in the morning. It was agreed that the steamer should blow her whistle for me if first on the move. I watched the steamer, off and on, through the night for the pleasure alone of seeing her electric lights, a pleasing sight in contrast to the ordinary Fuegian canoe with a brand of fire in it. The sloop was the first under way, but the Colombia, soon following, passed, and saluted as she went by. Had the captain given me his steamer, his company would have been no worse off than they were two or three months later. I read…

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