Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:07

Excerpt #1, from Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, by Richard Morris

…Green Chapel; there passes none by that place, however proud in arms, that he does not ‘ding him to death with dint of his hand.’ He is a man immoderate and ‘no mercy uses,’ for be it churl or chaplain that by the chapel rides, monk or mass-priest, or any man else, it is as pleasant to him to kill them as to go alive himself. Wherefore I tell thee truly, ‘come ye there, ye be killed, though ye had twenty lives to spend. He has dwelt there long of yore, and on field much sorrow has wrought. Against his sore dints ye may not defend you’ (ll. 2069-2117). Therefore, good Sir Gawayne, let the man alone, and for God’s sake go by some other path, and then I shall hie me home again. I swear to you by [Footnote 1: He only in part keeps to his covenant, as he holds back the love-lace.] God and all His saints that I will never say that ever ye attempted to flee from any man." Gawayne thanks his guide for his well-meant kindness, but declares that to the Green Chapel he will go, though the owner thereof be “a stern knave,” for God can devise means to save his servants. “Mary!” quoth the other, "since it pleases thee to lose thy life I will not hinder thee. Have thy helmet on thy head, thy spear in thy hand, and ride down this path by yon rock-side, till thou be brought to the…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #2, from The Blue Castle: a novel, by L. M. Montgomery

…hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples in his thin cheeks when he smiled. All these thoughts flashed through Valancy’s mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers. “Good-evening, Miss Stirling.” Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Any one might have said it. But Barney Snaith had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy. When he said good-evening you felt that it was a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was. Also, you felt that some of the credit was yours. Valancy felt all this vaguely, but she couldn’t imagine why she was trembling from head to foot–it must be her heart. If only he didn’t notice it! “I’m going over to the Port,” Barney was saying. “Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?” “Will you get some salt codfish for us?” said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish. “Certainly. You’re sure there’s nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson. And she always gets back some time, does Lady Jane.”…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #3, from A Few Practical Suggestions, by Logan Pearsall Smith and Society for Pure English

…popular speech which are in their opinion worthy of a larger currency; they can use them themselves and call the attention of their friends to them, and if they are writers, they may be able, like the writers of the past, to give them a literary standing. If their suggestions are not accepted, no harm is done; while, if they make a happy hit and bring to public notice a popular term or idiom which the language needs and accepts, they have performed a service to our speech of no small importance. L.P.S. NOTES TO THE ABOVE Rôle. The italics and accent may be due to consciousness of roll. The French word will never make itself comfortable in English if it is homophonous with roll. Timbre. This word is in a peculiar condition. In the French it has very various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The article Clang in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall regretting that we have no word for this meaning, and suggesting that we should imitate the awkward German klang-farbe. We have no word unless we…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #4, from Tales of an Old Sea Port, by Wilfred Harold Munro

…[15] From 1715 to 1786 Rhode Island suffered from the issue of Bills of Credit, or paper money.–Ed. [16] Nota bene.–Ed. [17] Either Captain Potter or Father Fauque, in this statement, makes a mistake. On November 5th, in England, they celebrate their escape from the “Gunpowder Plot.” There is in the Prayer-book “A Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving,” which is to be used on that day “for the happy deliverance of King James I. and the Three Estates of England from the most traitorous and blood-intended massacre by Gunpowder; and also for the happy arrival of His Majesty King William on this day, for the deliverance of our church and nation.” The common people call it “Guy Fawkes’ Day.”[18]–Trans. [18] Guy Fawkes’ Day was observed with great fidelity, as far as noise was concerned, by Bristol boys of the last generation.–Ed. [19] Captain Potter was a member of St. Michael’s Church, Bristol, and as a good Church of England man was reading his Book of Common Prayer.–Ed. [20] Potter was not a Huguenot. If Father Fauque had known of the heresies abounding in “Rodelan” his astonishment would have been equalled by his horror.–Ed. [21] A toise is two yards.–Trans.…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #5, from Direct Conversion of Energy, by William R. Corliss

…thermionic conversion. The MHD generators use high-velocity electrically conducting gases to produce power and are generically closer to dynamic conversion concepts. The only concept they carry forward from the preceding conversion ideas is that of the plasma, the electrically conducting gas. Yet they are commonly classified as direct because they replace the rotating turbogenerator of the dynamic systems with a stationary pipe or duct. [Illustration: Figure 9 In the MHD duct (a), the electrons in the hot plasma move to the right under influence of force F in the magnetic field B. The electrons collected by the right-hand side of the duct are carried to the load. In a wire in the armature of a conventional generator (b) the electrons are forced to the right by the magnetic field.] a MHD Duct HOT PLASMA IN COOL GAS OUT TO RADIATOR Magnetic Field LOAD ELECTRONS b…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #6, from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

…their support.= Hitopadesa. =He can ill run that canna gang= (walk). Sc. Pr. =He cannot lay eggs, but he can cackle.= Dut. Pr. =He cannot see the wood for the trees.= Ger. Pr. =He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his= 15 =pack, / For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back.= Goldsmith. =He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner.= Sir P. Sidney. =He conquers grief who can take a firm resolution.= Goethe. =He could distinguish and divide / A hair ’twixt south and south-west side.= Butler. =He cries out before he is hurt.= It. Pr. =He dances well to whom fortune pipes.= Pr. 20 =He doesna aye flee when he claps his wings.= Sc. Pr. =He does not deserve wine who drinks it as…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #7, 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….

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #8, from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, by Charles Dickens

…“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. “You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge. The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance. “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!” “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #9, from The Odyssey, by Homer

…Arete brought a magnificent chest from her own room, and inside it she packed all the beautiful presents of gold and raiment which the Phaeacians had brought. Lastly she added a cloak and a good shirt from Alcinous, and said to Ulysses: “See to the lid yourself, and have the whole bound round at once, for fear any one should rob you by the way when you are asleep in your ship.” 72 When Ulysses heard this he put the lid on the chest and made it fast with a bond that Circe had taught him. He had done so before an upper servant told him to come to the bath and wash himself. He was very glad of a warm bath, for he had had no one to wait upon him ever since he left the house of Calypso, who as long as he remained with her had taken as good care of him as though he had been a god. When the servants had done washing and anointing him with oil, and had given him a clean cloak and shirt, he left the bath room and joined the guests who were sitting over their wine. Lovely Nausicaa stood by one of the bearing-posts supporting the roof of the cloister, and admired him as she saw him pass. “Farewell stranger,” said she, “do not forget me when you are safe at home again, for it is to me first that you owe a ransom for having saved your life.” And Ulysses said, “Nausicaa, daughter of great Alcinous, may Jove the…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #10, from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin

…not likely to succeed, I am obliged to send word to the general in fourteen days; and I suppose Sir John St. Clair, the hussar, with a body of soldiers, will immediately enter the province for the purpose, which I shall be sorry to hear, because I am very sincerely and truly your friend and well-wisher, “B. Franklin.” I received of the general about eight hundred pounds, to be disbursed in advance-money to the waggon owners, etc.; but that sum being insufficient, I advanc’d upward of two hundred pounds more, and in two weeks the one hundred and fifty waggons, with two hundred and fifty-nine carrying horses, were on their march for the camp. The advertisement promised payment according to the valuation, in case any waggon or horse should be lost. The owners, however, alleging they did not know General Braddock, or what dependence might be had on his promise, insisted on my bond for the performance, which I accordingly gave them. While I was at the camp, supping one evening with the officers of Colonel Dunbar’s regiment, he represented to me his concern for the subalterns, who, he said, were generally not in affluence, and could ill afford, in this dear country, to lay in the stores that might be necessary in so long a march, thro’ a wilderness, where nothing was to…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #11, from Japanese Literature, by Epiphanius Wilson

…I thought of coming to have a talk with you, but you see my health has been very bad of late, and I seldom appear at Court, having resigned my office. It would be impolitic to give cause to be talked about, and for it to be said that I stretch my old bones when private matters please me. Of course, I have no particular reason to fear the world; still, if there is anything dreadful, it is the demagogical world. When I see what unpleasant things are happening to you, which were no more probable than that the heavens should fall, I really feel that everything in the world is irksome to me." “Yes, what you say is indeed true,” replied Genji. "However, all things in the world–this or that–are the outcome of what we have done in our previous existence. Hence if we dive to the bottom we shall see that every misfortune is only the result of our own negligence. Examples of men’s losing the pleasures of the Court are, indeed, not wanting. Some of these cases may not go so far as a deprivation of titles and honors, as is mine;[106] still, if one thus banished from the pleasures of Court, behaves himself as unconcernedly as those to whom no such misfortune has happened, this would not be becoming. So, at least, it is considered in a foreign country. Repentance is what one ought to expect in such circumstances, and banishment to a far-off locality is a measure generally adopted for…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #12, from Let’s Get Together, by Isaac Asimov

…(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license. Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works 1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. 1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

A production of Friendlyskies.net