Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:24

Excerpt #1, from Latin Phrase Book, by Carl Meissner

…nobis)—tradition, history tells us. tradunt, dicunt, ferunt—they say; it is commonly said. accepimus[4]—we know; we have been told. historiae prodiderunt (without nobis)—history has handed down to us. apud rerum scriptores scriptum videmus, scriptum est—we read in history. duplex est memoria de aliqua re—a twofold tradition prevails on this subject. rerum veterum memoria—ancient history. memoria vetus (Or. 34. 120)—ancient history. veterum annales—ancient history. veterum annalium monumenta—ancient history. antiquitatis memoria—ancient history. recentioris aetatis memoria—modern history. memoria huius aetatis (horum temporum)—the history of our own times; contemporary history. nostra memoria (Cael. 18. 43)—the history of our own times; contemporary history. omnis memoria, omnis memoria aetatum, temporum, civitatum or omnium rerum, gentium, temporum, saeculorum memoria—universal history. memoriam annalium or temporum replicare—to consult history….

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Excerpt #2, from The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant

…admit the existence of a necessary being, and consider that there exists a necessity for a definite and final answer to these questions. In such a case, we cannot make a better choice, or rather we have no choice at all, but feel ourselves obliged to declare in favour of the absolute unity of complete reality, as the highest source of the possibility of things. But if there exists no motive for coming to a definite conclusion, and we may leave the question unanswered till we have fully weighed both sides—in other words, when we are merely called upon to decide how much we happen to know about the question, and how much we merely flatter ourselves that we know—the above conclusion does not appear to be so great advantage, but, on the contrary, seems defective in the grounds upon which it is supported. For, admitting the truth of all that has been said, that, namely, the inference from a given existence (my own, for example) to the existence of an unconditioned and necessary being is valid and unassailable; that, in the second place, we must consider a being which contains all reality, and consequently all the conditions of other things, to be absolutely unconditioned; and admitting too, that we have thus discovered the conception of a thing to which may be attributed, without inconsistency, absolute necessity—it does not follow from all this that the conception of a limited being, in which the supreme…

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Excerpt #3, from Nonsense Novels, by Stephen Leacock

…and varnished boots with spats. “You won’t mind accepting these things, Mr. Hayloft. Our force would like very much to enable you to make a suitable appearance in the court.” Carefully dressed and shaved, Hezekiah descended. He was introduced to the leading officials of the force, and spent a pleasant hour of chat over a cigar, discussing the incidents of the night before. In the course of the morning a number of persons called to meet and congratulate Hezekiah. “I want to tell you, sir,” said the editor of a great American daily, “that your work of last night will be known and commented on all over the States. Your shooting of the footman was a splendid piece of nerve, sir, and will do much in defence of the unwritten law.” “Mr. Hayloft,” said another caller, “I am sorry not to have met you sooner. Our friends here tell me that you have been in New York for some months. I regret, sir, that we did not know you. This is the name of my firm, Mr. Hayloft. We are leading lawyers here, and we want the honour of defending you. We may! Thank you, sir. And now, as we have still an hour or two before the court, I want to run you up to my house in my motor. My wife is very anxious to have a little luncheon with you.”…

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Excerpt #4, from History of biology, by L. C. Miall

…form of a hollow sphere (the gastræa of modern embryology). There are, he says, no new formations in nature; all is conversion. When he comes to speak of the pharyngeal clefts of mammals and birds, recently discovered by Rathke, he remarks that their correspondence with the gill-clefts of fishes is obvious. We wonder what is coming next, but our curiosity is not gratified by any memorable deduction. Neither here nor in his miscellanies (Reden), published nearly fifty years later, does he admit that mammals and birds can have descended from gill-breathing vertebrates. If we are inclined to hint that Baer, having gone so far, might well have gone a little farther, it is only fair to recollect that every leader in science is more or less open to the same reproach. The Cell Theory. Any one of the higher animals or plants admits of analysis into organs, each adapted to one or more functions. Bichât (1801) showed that the body of one of the higher animals is not only a collection of organs, but also a collection of tissues, and the same is true of the higher plants. Analysis of the organism was carried a step further when in 1838-9 Schleiden and Schwann announced that all the higher animals and plants are made up of cells, which were at first supposed to consist in every case of a cell-wall, fluid contents, and…

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Excerpt #5, from A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed., by W. C. Bartlett

…mischief. After making a hundred young chickens orphans, he broke his chain one night and left for the forest. The thief came back a few nights afterward to make more orphans. That gray pelt tacked up on the rear of the barn is his obituary. A series of brilliant experiments that were to have been made on a young rattlesnake turned out not a whit more satisfactory. The reptile was not “raised” just here, but was presented by a friend. His teeth were to have been drawn, after which various observations were to have been made concerning his tastes and habits, and particularly his disposition when not provoked. There was a prospect of making an honest reptile of him. He was put in an empty barrel for the night; but next morning two half-breed Shanghaes had him, one by the tail and the other by the head. He parted about midway, each miserable rooster swallowing his half, and that without even the excuse of a morbid appetite. Since that time I have never been able to hate a young rattlesnake half as much as that detestable breed of Shanghaes. If one is not sick unto death, what more effectual medication can be found than the sun, and the south wind, and the all-embracing earth? The children of the poor are healthy, because they sprout out of the very dirt. The sun dispels humors, enriches the blood; and the winds execute a sanitary commission for these neglected ones. They live because they…

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Excerpt #6, from Greenmantle, by John Buchan

…his chest a lot of amazing stuff. I wasn’t there, but a man who was told me that he never heard such clotted nonsense. He said that Germany was right in wanting the freedom of the seas, and that America would back her up, and that the British Navy was a bigger menace to the peace of the world than the Kaiser’s army. He admitted that he had once thought differently, but he was an honest man and not afraid to face facts. The oration closed suddenly, when he got a brussels-sprout in the eye, at which my friend said he swore in a very unpacifist style. After that he wrote other letters to the Press, saying that there was no more liberty of speech in England, and a lot of scallywags backed him up. Some Americans wanted to tar and feather him, and he got kicked out of the Savoy. There was an agitation to get him deported, and questions were asked in Parliament, and the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs said his department had the matter in hand. I was beginning to think that Blenkiron was carrying his tomfoolery too far, so I went to see Sir Walter, but he told me to keep my mind easy. “Our friend’s motto is ‘Thorough’,” he said, “and he knows very well what he is about. We have officially requested him to leave, and he sails from Newcastle on Monday. He will be shadowed wherever he goes, and we hope to provoke more outbreaks. He is a very capable fellow.” The last I saw of him was on the Saturday afternoon when I met him in…

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Excerpt #7, from The Communist Manifesto, by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx

…class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares…

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Excerpt #8, from The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P. G. Wodehouse

…Katie went back to Genevieve, and Genevieve was simply horrid. Cold and haughty, a beautiful iceberg of dudgeon, she refused to speak a single word during the whole long journey back to Sixth Avenue. And Katie, whose tender heart would at other times have been tortured by this hostility, leant back in her seat, and was happy. Her mind was far away from Genevieve’s frozen gloom, living over again the wonderful happenings of the afternoon. Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, but trouble was waiting for her in Sixth Avenue. Trouble was never absent for very long from Katie’s unselfish life. Arriving at the little bookshop, she found Mr Murdoch, the glazier, preparing for departure. Mr Murdoch came in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to play draughts with her grandfather, who was paralysed from the waist, and unable to leave the house except when Katie took him for his outing in Washington Square each morning in his bath-chair. Mr Murdoch welcomed Katie with joy. ‘I was wondering whenever you would come back, Katie. I’m afraid the old man’s a little upset.’ ‘Not ill?’ ’Not ill. Upset. And it was my fault, too. Thinking he’d be interested, I read him a piece from the paper where I seen about these English…

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Excerpt #9, from The Art of War, by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

…one can command the services of a good general like Sun Tzŭ, who was employed by Wu Tzŭ-hsu, there is no need to learn it oneself. Hence the remark added by Confucius: “If I fight, I conquer.” The men of the present day, however, willfully interpret these words of Confucius in their narrowest sense, as though he meant that books on the art of war were not worth reading. With blind persistency, they adduce the example of Chao Kua, who pored over his father’s books to no purpose, [67] as a proof that all military theory is useless. Again, seeing that books on war have to do with such things as opportunism in designing plans, and the conversion of spies, they hold that the art is immoral and unworthy of a sage. These people ignore the fact that the studies of our scholars and the civil administration of our officials also require steady application and practice before efficiency is reached. The ancients were particularly chary of allowing mere novices to botch their work. [68] Weapons are baneful [69] and fighting perilous; and useless unless a general is in constant practice, he ought not to hazard other men’s lives in battle. [70] Hence it is essential that Sun Tzŭ’s 13 chapters should be studied. Hsiang Liang used to instruct his nephew Chi [71] in the art of war. Chi got a rough idea of the art in its general bearings, but would not pursue his studies to their proper outcome, the consequence being that…

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Excerpt #10, 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 #11, from Anna Karenina, by graf Leo Tolstoy

…the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground. “Can I have missed it?” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could not see for the smoke. “Here it is!” said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. “Well, I’m glad you were successful,” said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe. “It was a bad shot from the right barrel,” responded Stepan Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. “Sh… it’s flying!” The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying,…

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Excerpt #12, from Curiosities of Human Nature, by Samuel G. Goodrich

…to find out this and that, mentioning the different parts contained in that theorem. His father then asked how he came to inquire about that. He replied, that he had found out such a thing, naming some of the more simple problems; and thus, in reply to different questions, he showed that he had gone on his own investigations, totally unassisted, from the most simple definition in geometry, to Euclid’s thirty-second proposition. This, it must be remembered, was when Pascal was but twelve years of age. His subsequent progress perfectly accorded with this extraordinary display of talent. His father now gave him Euclid’s Elements to peruse at his hours of recreation. He read them, and understood them, without any assistance. His progress was so rapid that he was soon admitted to the meetings of a society of which his father, Roberval, and some other celebrated mathematicians were members, and from which afterwards originated the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris. During Pascal’s residence with his father at Rouen, and while he was only in his nineteenth year, he invented his famous arithmetical machine, by which all numerical calculations, however complex, can be made by the mechanical operation of its different parts, without any arithmetical skill in the person who uses it. He had a patent for this invention in 1649. His studies, however, began to be interrupted when he…

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