Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:04

Excerpt #1, from The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy, by Ernst Haeckel

…forms and functions, when we have a sociological knowledge of the various classes that compose it, and the laws of their association and division of labor; and when we have made an anthropological study of the nature of the persons who have united, under the same laws, for the formation of a community and are distributed in its various classes. The familiar arrangement of these classes, and the settling of the rank in the mass and the governing body, show us how this complex social organism is built up step by step. But we have to look in the same way on the cell-state, which is made up from the separate individualities in human society or in the kingdom of the tissue-animals, or the branches in the kingdom of the tissue-plants. Their complex organism, composed of various organs and tissues, can only be understood when we are acquainted with their constituent elements, the cells, and the laws according to which these elementary organisms unite to form cell-communities and tissues, and are in turn modified in the divers organs in the division of labor. We must, therefore, first establish the scale of the morphonta, and the laws of their association and ergonomy, according to which the several stages or conditions of morphological individuality build on each other. Three such stages may be at once distinguished: (1) the cell (or, more correctly, the plastid), (2) the person (animal) or branch…

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Excerpt #2, from The Art of War, by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

…is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains. 26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics—that is what the multitude cannot comprehend. 27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. 28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. 29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. 30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. 31. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. 32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. 33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain. 34. The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth) are not always…

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Excerpt #3, from A Doll’s House : a play, by Henrik Ibsen

…happen, not for all the world. MRS LINDE. I will go at once and see Krogstad. NORA…. Don’t go to him; he will do you some harm. MRS LINDE. There was a time when he would gladly do anything for my sake. NORA…. He? MRS LINDE. Where does he live? NORA…. How should I know—? Yes [feeling in her pocket], here is his card. But the letter, the letter—! HELMER. [calls from his room, knocking at the door]. Nora! Nora [cries out anxiously]. Oh, what’s that? What do you want? HELMER. Don’t be so frightened. We are not coming in; you have locked the door. Are you trying on your dress? NORA….

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Excerpt #4, from The Jest Book, by Mark Lemon

…ARCHDEACON PALEY was in very high spirits when he was presented to his first preferment in the Church. He attended at a visitation dinner just after this event, and during the entertainment called out jocosely, “Waiter, shut down that window at the back of my chair, and open another behind some curate.” MCCCXCI.–A BARBER SHAVED BY A LAWYER. “SIR,” said a barber to an attorney who was passing his door, “will you tell me if this is a good half-sovereign?” The lawyer, pronouncing the piece good, deposited it in his pocket, adding, with gravity, “If you’ll send your lad to my office, I’ll return the three and four-pence.” MCCCXCII.–A MAN OF METAL. EDWIN JAMES, examining a witness, asked him what his business was. He answered, “A dealer in old iron.”–“Then,” said the counsel, “you must of course be a thief.”–“I don’t see,” replied the witness, “why a dealer in iron must necessarily be a thief, more than a dealer in brass.” MCCCXCIII.–SPECIMEN OF THE LACONIC. “BE less prolix,” says Grill. I like advice. “Grill, you’re an ass!” Now, surely, that’s concise. MCCCXCIV.–A DROP….

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Excerpt #5, from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

…They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat’s as white as snow and makes a good fry. Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn’t walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better. I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I…

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Excerpt #6, from English Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs

…third head said: “When does the dead carry the living, riddle me that?” Then the young man answered up at once and said: “When a ship sails on the sea with men inside her.” When the Ettin found this, he knew that his power was gone. The young man then took up an axe and hewed off the monster’s three heads. He next asked the old woman to show him where the king’s daughter lay; and the old woman took him upstairs, and opened a great many doors, and out of every door came a beautiful lady who had been imprisoned there by the Ettin; and one of the ladies was the king’s daughter. She also took him down into a low room, and there stood a stone pillar, that he had only to touch with his wand, when his brother started into life. And the whole of the prisoners were overjoyed at their deliverance, for which they thanked the young man. Next day they all set out for the king’s court, and a gallant company they made. And the king married his daughter to the young man that had delivered her, and gave a noble’s daughter to his brother; and so they all lived happily all the rest of their days. THE GOLDEN ARM Here was once a man who travelled the land all over in search of a wife. He saw young and old, rich and poor, pretty and plain, and could not meet with one to his mind. At last he found a woman, young, fair, and rich, who possessed a right arm of solid gold. He married her at once,…

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Excerpt #7, from Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain

…We know that the class of maladies benefited by the water and baths at Aix are those due to defect of nourishment, debility of the nervous system, or to a gouty, rheumatic, herpetic, or scrofulous diathesis–all diseases extremely debilitating, and requiring a tonic, and not depressing action of the remedy. This it seems to find here, as recorded experience and daily action can testify. According to the line of treatment followed particularly with due regard to the temperature, the action of the Aix waters can be made sedative, exciting, derivative, or alterative and tonic. The “Establishment” is the property of France, and all the officers and servants are employees of the French government. The bathhouse is a huge and massive pile of white marble masonry, and looks more like a temple than anything else. It has several floors and each is full of bath cabinets. There is every kind of bath–for the nose, the ears, the throat, vapor baths, swimming baths, and all people’s favorite, the douche. It is a good building to get lost in, when you are not familiar with it. From early morning until nearly noon people are streaming in and streaming out without halt. The majority come afoot, but great numbers are brought in sedan chairs, a sufficiently ugly contrivance whose cover is a steep little tent made of striped canvas. You see nothing of the patient in this diving bell as the bearers tramp along,…

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Excerpt #8, from The Observations of Professor Maturin, by Clyde Furst

…indigestible. And Thoreau literally consumed himself in following and advocating a diet which so prepared him for tuberculosis that living half his time in the open air could not prevent it. “The opposite extreme, which is yet more common, is even less attractive in men of genius. Who likes to remember that Spenser and Milton had gout, or that Goethe drank in his time fifty thousand bottles of wine? As for Pepys, what do you think of having one’s ‘only mayde’ dress such a home dinner as this, copied from his ‘Diary:’ ‘A fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton, three carps, a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a dish of anchovies, and good wine of several sorts’? No wonder that his better qualities are obscured in our memories of him. “Philosophers, men of action, and, interestingly enough, men of the world, have usually set a better example. ‘They that sup with Plato,’ said Aelianus, ‘are not sick or out of temper the next day.’ Socrates, Epicurus, and Kant, all preached and practiced judgment and restraint. Horace and Catullus insisted that their pampered guests should bring their luxuries with them. Montaigne highly disapproved of elaborate cooking, and Pope refused to dine with Lady Suffolk so late in the day as four. “Then there is that admirable story of Cincinnatus, whom the venal…

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Excerpt #9, from Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of Their History and Development

…simplified form of a more elaborate sign representing the plan of a palace court, a figure to which one of the Minoan signs bears a close resemblance. The Knossian coins shown in Figs. 20 to 31 are from the British Museum collection and are reproduced by the courtesy of the Keeper of the Coins and Medals Department, who supplied the writer with plaster casts for the purpose. They date, of course, from times greatly posterior to those of the Minoan civilisation, from times when the culture of Greece had long replaced that of the Mycenaeans, or whatever similar race it was that succeeded the Minoans (see Appendix IV, i.). Figs. 20, 21, and 22 show silver coins dating from about 500 to 430 B.C. They portray on one side the Minotaur and on the other a symmetrical meander pattern which, it needs very little imagination to see, has reference to the labyrinth in which the monster was alleged to dwell. Fig. 23 shows a silver coin of a rather later date, representing on its obverse a female head which is thought to be that of Demeter or Persephone, and on the reverse a meander-labyrinth containing a star at its centre. Fig. 24 shows a similar obverse, but on the reverse we see a bull’s head surrounded by a simple meander frame….

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Excerpt #10, from Rilla of Ingleside, by L. M. Montgomery

…it is incredible that the spring can come as usual. The spring does not fail because of the million agonies of others–but for mine–oh, can the universe go on?’ “‘Don’t feel bitter with yourself, dear,’ mother said gently. ‘It is a very natural thing to feel as if things couldn’t go on just the same when some great blow has changed the world for us. We all feel like that.’”Then that horrid old Cousin Sophia of Susan’s piped up. She was sitting there, knitting and croaking like an old ‘raven of bode and woe’ as Walter used to call her. “‘You ain’t as bad off as some, Miss Oliver,’ she said, ‘and you shouldn’t take it so hard. There’s some as has lost their husbands; that’s a hard blow; and there’s some as has lost their sons. You haven’t lost either husband or son.’”‘No,’ said Gertrude, more bitterly still. ‘It’s true I haven’t lost a husband–I have only lost the man who would have been my husband. I have lost no son–only the sons and daughters who might have been born to me–who will never be born to me now.’ "‘It isn’t ladylike to talk like that,’ said Cousin Sophia in a shocked tone; and then Gertrude laughed right out, so wildly that Cousin Sophia was really frightened. And when poor tortured Gertrude, unable to…

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Excerpt #11, from Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Jonathan Swift

…management of our treasury; the valour and achievements of our forces, by sea and land. I computed the number of our people, by reckoning how many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party among us. I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular which I thought might redound to the honour of my country. And I finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events in England for about a hundred years past. This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions he intended to ask me. When I had put an end to these long discourses, his majesty, in a sixth audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and objections, upon every article. He asked, “What methods were used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable parts of their lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly, when any noble family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those…

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Excerpt #12, from Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, by Lewis Carroll

…I’ve offended it again!" for the mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went. So she called softly after it: “mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won’t talk about cats and dogs any more, if you don’t like them!” When the mouse heard this, it turned and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale, (with passion, Alice thought,) and it said in a trembling low voice “let’s get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you my history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.” It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite full of birds and animals that had fallen into it. There was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore. [Illustration] Chapter II [Illustration] They were indeed a curious looking party that assembled on the bank–the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them–all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. The first question of course was, how to get dry:…

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