Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:51

Excerpt #1, from Remarks, by Bill Nye

…the damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had been rescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come back at night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority of hell as a refuge from the Wallula hotel. Now and then in the night I would almost yield to a wild impulse and catch those pantaloons off the hook, to rush out and go to Canada with them, and then I would softly go through the pockets and hang them back again. It was an awful night. When morning dawned at last, and I took the pillow out of my ear and looked in the delirious and soap-spattered mirror, I saw that my beautiful hair, which had been such a source of pride to me ten years ago, had disappeared in places. I paid my bill, called the attention of the landlord to the fact that I had not taken those pantaloons and ‘betrayed’ his trust, and then I went away. Flying Machines. A long and exhaustive examination of the history of flying machines enables me to give briefly some of the main points of a few, for the benefit of those who may be interested in this science. I give what I do in order to prepare the public to take advantage of the different methods, and be ready at once to fly as soon as the weather gets pleasant. A Frenchman invented a flying-machine, or dofunny, as we scientists would term it, in 1600 and something, whereby he could sail down from the…

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Excerpt #2, from Much Ado about Nothing, by William Shakespeare

…To her he thinks not worthy; yet he wooes; Yet will he swear he loves. DON PEDRO. Nay, pray thee come; Or if thou wilt hold longer argument, Do it in notes. BALTHASAR. Note this before my notes; There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting. DON PEDRO. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks; Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing! [Music.] BENEDICK. Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done. BALTHASAR [sings.] Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore,…

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Excerpt #3, from You no longer count, by René Boylesve

…like you." “But they tell me that everything is changed.” “They are right, and you see it clearly because you are outside of Eden, which you had never left before. It is only that some of them accept the change quickly because they were prepared for it, and others because they are less sensitive than you.” “Then, if such a change exists, does that mean that I should cease to mourn my husband?” “No; but the day will come when you will mourn him more. Remember what I say: you will mourn him more. That is the way in which you will take your part in the change.” “More!” ejaculated Odette. “Is it possible? I do not understand you.” “I mean by ‘more’ another manner of mourning, which you will doubtless find more endurable. Let us not talk more about it now, but keep in mind what I have said.” She shrank more and more from society, till she could endure neither news nor the face of a friend. She caused herself to be denied at the door–forbade her maid to speak to her of the war, even to bring in the newspapers. She wished to hear nothing. Then Paris became odious to her because she could not keep herself sufficiently in retirement. Since she was not permitted to go and…

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Excerpt #4, from Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, by William Sleeman

…that language was given to man for the better concealment of his thoughts, they at least seem to regard in what they say, not its resemblance to the tact in question, but rather its subserviency to the purpose in view.’ (Brougham’s George IV.) ‘Yet, let it never be forgotten, that princes are nurtured in falsehood by the atmosphere of lies which envelops their palace; steeled against natural sympathies by the selfish natures of all that surround them; hardened in cruelty, partly indeed by the fears incident to their position, but partly too by the unfeeling creatures, the factions, the unnatural productions of a court whom alone they deal with; trained for tyrants by the prostration which they find in all the minds which they come in contact with; encouraged to domineer by the unresisting medium through which all their steps to power and its abuse are made.’ (Brougham’s Carnot.) But Lord Brougham is too harsh. Johnson has observed truly enough, ‘Honesty is not necessarily greater where elegance is less’; nor does a sense of supreme or despotic power necessarily imply the exercise or abuse of it. Princes have, happily, the same yearning as the peasant after the respect and affection of the circle around them, and the people under them; and they must generally seek it by the same means….

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Excerpt #5, from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1, by Edgar Allan Poe

…sung by the rabble upon the occasion of Aurelian, in the Sarmatic war, having slain, with his own hand, nine hundred and fifty of the enemy. THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. —Sir Thomas Browne. The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in…

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Excerpt #6, from The Satyricon — Complete, by Petronius Arbiter

…pitying head with my sharp knuckles. In tears, he sat upon the bed, while I applied each eye in turn, to the opening, filling myself up as with a dainty dish, with Eumolpus’ misfortunes, and gloating over their prolongation, when Bargates, agent for the building, called from his dinner, was carried into the midst of the brawl by two chair-men, for he had the gout. He carried on for some time against drunkards and fugitive slaves, in a savage tone and with a barbarous accent, and then, looking around and catching sight of Eumolpus, “What,” he exclaimed, “are you here, nay prince of poets? and these damned slaves don’t scatter at once and stop their brawling!” (Then, whispering in Eumolpus’ ear,) “My bedfellow’s got an idea that she’s finer-haired than I am; lampoon her in a poem, if you think anything of me, and make ‘er ashamed.” CHAPTER THE NINETY-SEVENTH. Eumolpus was speaking privately with Bargates, when a crier attended by a public slave entered the inn, accompanied by a medium-sized crowd of outsiders. Waving a torch that gave out more smoke than light, he announced: “Strayed from the baths, a short time ago, a boy about sixteen years of age, curly headed, a minion, handsome, answers to the name of Giton. One thousand sesterces reward will be paid to anyone bringing him back or giving information as to his whereabouts.” Ascyltos, dressed in a tunic of many colors, stood not far from the crier, holding out a…

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Excerpt #7, from Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill

…feeling tends to make us resent indiscriminately whatever any one does that is disagreeable to us; but when moralized by the social feeling, it only acts in the directions conformable to the general good; just persons resenting a hurt to society, though not otherwise a hurt to themselves, and not resenting a hurt to themselves, however painful, unless it be of the kind which society has a common interest with them in the repression of. It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that when we feel our sentiment of justice outraged, we are not thinking of society at large, or of any collective interest, but only of the individual case. It is common enough certainly, though the reverse of commendable, to feel resentment merely because we have suffered pain; but a person whose resentment is really a moral feeling, that is, who considers whether an act is blameable before he allows himself to resent it–such a person, though he may not say expressly to himself that he is standing up for the interest of society, certainly does feel that he is asserting a rule which is for the benefit of others as well as for his own. If he is not feeling this–if he is regarding the act solely as it affects him individually–he is not consciously just; he is not concerning himself about the justice of his actions. This is admitted even by anti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before remarked) propounds as…

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Excerpt #8, 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 #9, from The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

…“You like the bull-fights?” “Sure. Don’t you?” “Yes,” he said. “I guess I like them.” Then after a little: “Where you go now?” “Up to Burguete to fish.” “Well,” he said, “I hope you catch something.” He shook hands and turned around to the back seat again. The other Basques had been impressed. He sat back comfortably and smiled at me when I turned around to look at the country. But the effort of talking American seemed to have tired him. He did not say anything after that. The bus climbed steadily up the road. The country was barren and rocks stuck up through the clay. There was no grass beside the road. Looking back we could see the country spread out below. Far back the fields were squares of green and brown on the hillsides. Making the horizon were the brown mountains. They were strangely shaped. As we climbed higher the horizon kept changing. As the bus ground slowly up the road we could see other mountains coming up in the south. Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the…

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Excerpt #10, from The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

…night. “I come from Byfleet,” he said; “a man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to come away. Then came soldiers. We went out to look, and there were clouds of smoke to the south—nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming that way. Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from Weybridge. So I’ve locked up my house and come on.” At that time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience. About eight o’clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all over the south of London. My brother could not hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly. He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent’s Park, about two. He was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run, even as mine had run on Saturday, on military details. He thought of all those silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside; he tried to imagine “boilers on stilts” a hundred feet high. There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford…

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Excerpt #11, from Bel Ami; Or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel, by Guy de Maupassant

…stammered: “Have you not been better since you are here?” His friend shrugged his shoulders impatiently: “You will see very soon.” And he bowed his head again. Duroy continued: “At home it is still wintry. It snows, hails, rains, and is so dark that they have to light the lamps at three o’clock in the afternoon.” Forestier asked: “Is there anything new at the office?” “Nothing. They have taken little Lacrin of the ‘Voltaire’ to fill your place, but he is incapable. It is time you came back.” The invalid muttered: “I? I will soon be writing under six feet of sod.” A long silence ensued. Mme. Forestier did not stir; she stood with her back to the room, her face toward the window. At length Forestier broke the silence in a gasping voice, heartrending to listen to: “How many more sunsets shall I see–eight–ten–fifteen–twenty–or perhaps thirty–no more. You have more time, you two–as for me–all is at an end. And everything will go on when I am gone as if I were here.” He paused a few moments, then continued: “Everything that I see reminds me that I shall not see them long. It is horrible. I shall no longer see the smallest objects–the glasses–the dishes–the beds on which we rest–the carriages. It is fine to drive in the evening. How I loved all that.”…

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Excerpt #12, from Planet of the Damned, by Harry Harrison

…carefully stacking the sheets of the report. “You can count on me for complete cooperation. Now I’ll study all this in bed if one of you overweight gentlemen will show me to a room with a strong lock on the inside of the door. Don’t call me; I’ll call you when I want breakfast.” Brion wasn’t sure how much of her barbed speech was humor and how much was serious, so he said nothing. He showed her to an empty cabin–she did lock the door–then looked for Ihjel. The Winner was in the galley adding to his girth with an immense gelatin dessert that filled a good-sized tureen. “Is she short for a native Terran?” Brion asked. “The top of her head is below my chin.” “That’s the norm. Earth is a reservoir of tired genes. Weak backs, vermiform appendixes, bad eyes. If they didn’t have the universities and the trained people we need I would never use them.” “Why did you lie to her about the Foundation?” “Because it’s a secret–isn’t that reason enough?” Ihjel rumbled angrily, scraping the last dregs from the bowl. "Better eat something. Build up the strength. The Foundation has to maintain its undercover status if it is going to accomplish anything. If she returns to Earth after this it’s better that she should know nothing…

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