Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:56

Excerpt #1, from Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus

…4 (return) [ Although this number one hundred and twenty drachmeae [of Alexandria, or sixty Jewish shekels] be here three times repeated, and that in all Josephus’s copies, Greek and Latin; yet since all the copies of Aristeus, whence Josephus took his relation, have this sum several times, and still as no more than twenty drachmae, or ten Jewish shekels; and since the sum of the talents, to be set down presently, which is little above four hundred and sixty, for somewhat more than one hundred thousand slaves, and is nearly the same in Josephus and Aristeus, does better agree to twenty than to one hundred and twenty drachmae; and since the value of a slave of old was at the utmost but thirty shekels, or sixty drachmae; see Exodus 21:32; while in the present circumstances of these Jewish slaves, and those so very numerous, Philadelphus would rather redeem them at a cheaper than at a dearer rate;—there is great reason to prefer here Aristeus’s copies before Josephus’s.] 5 (return) [ We have a very great encomium of this Simon the Just, the son of Onias, in the fiftieth chapter of the Ecclesiasticus, through the whole chapter. Nor is it improper to consult that chapter itself upon this occasion.] 6 (return) [ When we have here and presently mention made of Philadelphus’s queen and sister Arsinoe, we are to remember, with Spanheim, that Arsinoe was both his sister and his wife, according to…

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Excerpt #2, from Poems, by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, by Emily Dickinson

…Their faces upon God. A stately, shriven company; Convulsion playing round, Harmless as streaks of meteor Upon a planet’s bound. Their faith the everlasting troth; Their expectation fair; The needle to the north degree Wades so, through polar air. XIII. A PRAYER. I meant to have but modest needs, Such as content, and heaven; Within my income these could lie, And life and I keep even. But since the last included both, It would suffice my prayer But just for one to stipulate, And grace would grant the pair. And so, upon this wise I prayed, – Great Spirit, give to me…

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Excerpt #3, from Essays of a Biologist, by Julian Huxley

…intensity and lasting value, which as a matter of record it often does.[43] Put broadly and roughly, there are, then, three main accounts possible, or at any rate actually found in occidental civilization to-day, of the phenomena generally known as religious. The first is that of the out-and-out sceptic–that they are all illusions, imaginations of the childhood of the race. This is an extreme view which I do not feel called upon to discuss. The second is the view of almost every existing religious denomination in Europe–that God is a personal being. And the third is one, only just beginning to take shape, which I have endeavoured, with every consciousness of inadequacy, to outline–the account made possible by a radically scientific view of the universe. Those who adopt the third attitude believe that the second is a purely symbolic and not very accurate presentation of certain fundamental facts, of which they are attempting to give what seems to them an account which is closer to reality. Before the scientific work of the last three or four centuries, it was impossible to attempt what we may call a realistic account of this nature, so that symbols were perforce adopted. In Christian theology man formulated a coherent scheme, which, however, was purely symbolic, to account for the facts we have just been considering. The chief feature in any such scheme must be the…

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Excerpt #4, from The Subterranean World, by G. Hartwig

…among the buried articles. The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period during which a settled agricultural population, considerably advanced in the industrial arts, occupied the fertile valleys or the alluvial plains in the basin of the Mississippi, covered, since then, with vast forests, and tenanted by wild hunters without any traditionary connexion with their more civilised predecessors. The epoch when this people flourished, or the adverse circumstances which swept them away, are all equally unknown; but the age and nature of the trees found growing on some of their earthworks afford at least some data for estimating the minimum of time which must have passed since the mounds were abandoned. Trunks, displaying eight hundred rings of annual growth, have been cut down from them, and several generations of trees must have lived and died before the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of species which they supported when the white man first set foot in the valley of the Ohio. In a memoir on this subject, General Harrison, who was skilled in woodcraft, observes that ‘beyond all doubt no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks were in use; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all newly cleared ground in Ohio, would for a time be monopolised by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow locust and the black or white walnut. When the individuals which…

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Excerpt #5, from My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

…“Hello!” I said. “Couldn’t you find her?” “Yes, I found her,” he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow laughs. “Well, then——?” Freddie sank into a chair and groaned. “This isn’t her cousin, you idiot!” he said. “He’s no relation at all. He’s just a kid she happened to meet on the beach. She had never seen him before in her life.” “What! Who is he, then?” “I don’t know. Oh, Lord, I’ve had a time! Thank goodness you’ll probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for kidnapping. That’s my only consolation. I’ll come and jeer at you through the bars.” “Tell me all, old boy,” I said. It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he told the story he had prepared, and then—well, she didn’t actually call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had…

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Excerpt #6, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain

…as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was himself Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,–according to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights–I mean his rearing–often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the king’s leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any–even to the noble himself–unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize–and in but indifferently modified measure…

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Excerpt #7, from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

…Seb. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket, and give it his son for an apple. 85 Ant. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. Gon. Ay. Ant. Why, in good time. Gon. Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now 90 as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now queen. Ant. And the rarest that e’er came there. Seb. Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido. Ant. O, widow Dido! ay, widow Dido. 95 Gon. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I wore it? I mean, in a sort. Ant. That sort was well fished for. Gon. When I wore it at your daughter’s marriage? Alon. You cram these words into mine ears against 100 The stomach of my sense. Would I had never Married my daughter there! for, coming thence, My son is lost, and, in my rate, she too. Who is so far from Italy removed…

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Excerpt #8, from Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt

…temples is in such wise devised as to lead gradually from the full sunshine of the outer world to the obscurity of their retreats. At the entrance we find large open spaces, where air and light stream freely in. The hypostyle hall is pervaded by a sober twilight; the sanctuary is more than half lost in a vague darkness; and at the end of the building, in the farthest of the chambers, night all but reigns completely. The effect of distance which was produced by this gradual diminution of light, was still further heightened by various structural artifices. The parts, for instance, are not on the same level. The ground rises from the entrance (fig. 80), and there are always a few steps to mount in passing from one part to another. In the temple of Khonsû the difference of level is not more than 5-1/4 feet, but it is combined with a lowering of the roof, which in most cases is very strongly marked. From the pylon to the wall at the farther end, the height decreases continuously. The peristyle is loftier than the hypostyle hall, and the hypostyle hall is loftier than the sanctuary. The last hall of columns and the farthest chamber are lower and lower still. The architects of Ptolemaic times changed certain details of arrangement. They erected chapels and oratories on the terraced roofs, and reserved space for the construction of secret passages and crypts in the thickness of the walls, wherein to hide the treasure of the god (fig. 81). They, however, introduced only two important modifications of the original plan. The…

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Excerpt #9, from Against the Grain, by J.K. Huysmans

…saturated with moralizing twaddle and futility; in his hatred toward all this balderdash, he limited himself almost exclusively to the reading of Christian eloquence, to the books of Bourdaloue and Bossuet whose sonorously embellished periods were imposing; but, still more, he relished suggestive ideas condensed into severe and strong phrases, such as those created by Nicole in his reflections, and especially Pascal, whose austere pessimism and attrition deeply touched him. Apart from such books as these, French literature began in his library with the nineteenth century. This section was divided into two groups, one of which included the ordinary, secular literature, and the other the Catholic literature, a special but little known literature published by large publishing houses and circulated to the four corners of the earth. He had had the hardihood to explore such crypts as these, just as in the secular art he had discovered, under an enormous mass of insipid writings, a few books written by true masters. The distinctive character of this literature was the constant immutability of its ideas and language. Just as the Church perpetuated the primitive form of holy objects, so she has preserved the relics of her dogmas, piously retaining, as the frame that encloses them, the oratorical language of the celebrated century. As one of the Church’s…

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Excerpt #10, from Persuasion, by Jane Austen

…was among those on the foremost, and Mr Elliot had manoeuvred so well, with the assistance of his friend Colonel Wallis, as to have a seat by her. Miss Elliot, surrounded by her cousins, and the principal object of Colonel Wallis’s gallantry, was quite contented. Anne’s mind was in a most favourable state for the entertainment of the evening; it was just occupation enough: she had feelings for the tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience for the wearisome; and had never liked a concert better, at least during the first act. Towards the close of it, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr Elliot. They had a concert bill between them. “This,” said she, “is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of, but it is as nearly the meaning as I can give; for I do not pretend to understand the language. I am a very poor Italian scholar.” “Yes, yes, I see you are. I see you know nothing of the matter. You have only knowledge enough of the language to translate at sight these inverted, transposed, curtailed Italian lines, into clear, comprehensible, elegant English. You need not say anything more of your ignorance. Here is complete proof.” "I will not oppose such kind politeness; but I should be sorry to be…

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Excerpt #11, from The Early History of the Airplane, by Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright

…15 or 20-mile winds, we increased the area from 165 square feet, used in 1900, to 308 square feet–a size much larger than Lilienthal, Pilcher, or Chanute had deemed safe. Upon trial, however, the lifting capacity again fell very far short of calculation, so that the idea of securing practice while flying as a kite had to be abandoned. Mr. Chanute, who witnessed the experiments, told us that the trouble was not due to poor construction of the machine. We saw only one other explanation–that the tables of air-pressures in general use were incorrect. [Illustration] We then turned to gliding–coasting downhill on the air–as the only method of getting the desired practice in balancing a machine. After a few minutes’ practice we were able to make glides of over 300 feet, and in a few days were safely operating in 27-mile winds. In these experiments we met with several unexpected phenomena. We found that, contrary to the teachings of the books, the center of pressure on a curved surface traveled backward when the surface was inclined, at small angles, more and more edgewise to the wind. We also discovered that in free flight, when the wing on one side of the machine was presented to the wind at a greater angle than the one on the other side, the wing with the greater angle descended, and the machine turned in a direction just the reverse of what we were led to expect when flying the machine…

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Excerpt #12, from Literary Lapses, by Stephen Leacock

…of fraud, and after a time, in his enthusiasm, abandoning even the cuffs. I cannot look back upon those bright happy days of courtship without a sigh. “The happiness of Fifty-Six seemed to enter into and fill my whole life. I lived but from Saturday to Saturday. The appearance of false shirt-fronts would cast me to the lowest depths of despair; their absence raised me to a pinnacle of hope. It was not till winter softened into spring that Fifty-Six nerved himself to learn his fate. One Saturday he sent me a new white waistcoat, a garment which had hitherto been shunned by his modest nature, to prepare for his use. I bestowed upon it all the resources of my art; I read his purpose in it. On the Saturday following it was returned to me and, with tears of joy, I marked where a warm little hand had rested fondly on the right shoulder, and knew that Fifty-Six was the accepted lover of his sweetheart.” Ah-Yen paused and sat for some time silent; his pipe had sputtered out and lay cold in the hollow of his hand; his eye was fixed upon the wall where the light and shadows shifted in the dull flickering of the candle. At last he spoke again: "I will not dwell upon the happy days that ensued–days of gaudy summer neckties and white waistcoats, of spotless shirts and lofty collars worn but a single day by the fastidious lover. Our happiness seemed complete…

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