Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:23:25

Excerpt #1, from The Invasion of India, by Alexander the Great as described, by Arrian, Q. Curtius

…ancient authors as one of the most powerful nations of India. Their very name indicates their warlike propensities and predominance, for if it is not identical with that of the military caste, Kshatriya, it is at least a modified form of that word. Arrian subsequently (vi. 15) mentions a tribe of independent Indians whose name is a still closer transliteration of Kshatriya, the Xathroi, whose territories lay between the Indus and the lower course of the Akesinês. Strabo (XV. i. 30) notices some of the peculiar manners and customs of the Kathaians, such as infanticide, and Sati. Lassen has pointed out that their name is connected with that of the Kattia, a nomadic race scattered at intervals through the plains of the Panjâb, but supposed to be the aborigines of the country and of Kolarian descent. Their name occurs in that of the province of Kâthiawâr, which now comprises the province of Gujerat. NOTE M.—SANGALA Sir E. H. Bunbury, referring to the uncertainty of the identifications of the tribes and cities of the Panjâb mentioned by Alexander’s historians, says: “While the general course of his march must have followed approximately the same line of route that has been frequented in all ages from the banks of the Indus to those of the Beas, his expeditions against the various warlike tribes that refused submission to his arms led him into frequent excursions to the right and left of his main direction. And…

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Excerpt #2, from The Invasion of India,, by Alexander the Great as described,, by Arrian, Q. Curtius

…woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched, and so transfigured. Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impression was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,—alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected,—alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,—she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world’s law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—the…

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Excerpt #3, from Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

…great chamber. SECOND SERVANT. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys. Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all. [Exeunt.] Enter Capulet, &c. with the Guests and Gentlewomen to the Maskers. CAPULET. Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes Unplagu’d with corns will have a bout with you. Ah my mistresses, which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She I’ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day That I have worn a visor, and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, Such as would please; ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone, You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls. [Music plays, and they dance.] More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot….

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Excerpt #4, from Popular Tales from the Norse, by Asbjørnsen, Moe, and Dasent

…so soon as he was gone Boots and the Princess were in the cupboard hunting for his heart, but the more they sought for it, the less they found it. “Well”, said the Princess, “we’ll just try him once more.” So she decked out the cupboard with flowers and garlands, and when the time came for the Giant to come home, Boots crept under the bed again. Then back came the Giant. Snuff-snuff! “My eyes and limbs, what a smell of Christian blood there is in here!” “I know there is”, said the Princess; “for a little while since there came a magpie flying with a man’s bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made all the haste I could to get it out of the house again; but after all my pains, I daresay it’s that you smell.” When the Giant heard that, he said no more about it; but a little while after, he saw how the cupboard was all decked about with flowers and garlands; so he asked who it was that had done that? Who could it be but the Princess. “And, pray, what’s the meaning of all this tom-foolery?” asked the Giant. “Oh, I’m so fond of you, I couldn’t help doing it when I knew that your heart lay there”, said the Princess….

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Excerpt #5, from The Busy Life of Eighty Five Years of Ezra Meeker, by Ezra Meeker

…joined to accomplish anything by force outside the pale of the law, but when that sheriff put in an appearance, and we realized what it meant, there wasn’t a man in our party that did not run for his gun to the nearby camp, and it is needless to add that we did not need to use them. As if by magic a hundred guns were in sight. The sheriff withdrew, and the crossing went peaceably on till all our wagons were safely landed. But we had another danger to face; we learned that there would be an attempt made to take the boat from us, not as against us, but as against the owner, and but for the adroit management of McAuley and my brother Oliver (who had joined us) we would have been unable to fulfill our engagements with the owner. CHAPTER VI. OUT ON THE PLAINS. When we stepped foot upon the right bank of the Missouri River we were outside the pale of civil law. We were within the Indian country where no organized civil government existed. Some people and some writers have assumed that each man was “a law unto himself” and free to do his own will, dependent, of course, upon his physical ability to enforce it. Nothing could be further from the facts than this assumption, as evil-doers soon found out to their discomfort. No general organization for law and order was effected, but the American instinct for fair…

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Excerpt #6, from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

…of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty. “I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?” The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker. “What did you say?” “You can bear a little more light?” “I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that…

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Excerpt #7, from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

…receiving? And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life–while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness. And you receivers–and you are all receivers–assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is ito doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father. [Illustration: 0042]…

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Excerpt #8, from An Introduction to the History of Science, by Walter Libby

…(B) Imagination Poesy (C) Memory History ————————————————————————— Philosophia prima, or sapience —–+—+——–+———————-+——————————— (A) | | | Civil Philosophy | Intercourse | N | | (Standards of | Business | a | | right in:) | Government | t | Man +—————+——+——————————— | u | | Philosophy | Body | Medicine, Athletics, etc. | r | | of Humanity +——+——————————— | a | | (Anthropology)| | Logic | l | | | Soul | | | | | | Ethics | P +——–+————-+-+——+——–+———-+————- | h | | | Physics | Concrete | | i | | | (Material and | | M | l | | | Secondary | Abstract | a | o | | | Causes) | | t | s | Nature | Speculative | | | h | o | | | Metaphysics | Concrete | e…

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Excerpt #9, from Champions of the Fleet, by Edward Fraser

…did not, stood on and tacked and came close under her stern, and ¼ before 3 we began to engage her: ¼ before 4 she struck. “At that time the Vice-Admiral with the Jersey, Guernsey, and St. Albans stood in to westward of us after another ship on shore and fired some guns, when she struck; after which they set her on fire and stood in towards the Cape where another French ship was at anchor which they brought off. On our beginning to fire, the America fired some guns on the Ocean: she instantly hauled down her colours. “We sent a boat on board and took possession of our prize, which proved to be the Téméraire, 74 guns, 716 men. At ¼ to 5 we cut her cables and carried her down to the Admiral. “In the evening the Intrepid and America set fire to the Ocean.” Boscawen, with his work accomplished and the Toulon fleet accounted for, sailed away for England, carrying the Téméraire and the Modeste with him under British colours, to add both ships, in their original French names, to the British Navy. His battle in Lagos Bay under the shadow of the cliffs of Cape St. Vincent, if perhaps few people nowadays remember it, perhaps have ever heard of it, yet, in the words of Captain Mahan, “saved England from invasion,” and the Téméraire’s name should always stand for us as a memento of that fact. At the time the event made a widespread impression throughout Europe….

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Excerpt #10, from Classic French Course in English, by William Cleaver Wilkinson

…the book. We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting Fénelon appear more purely now in his character as dreamer and poet. Young Prince Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and Æneas-like, his descent into Hades. This incident affords Fénelon opportunity to exercise his best powers of awful and of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas are, in this episode of the “Telemachus,” superinduced upon pagan, after a manner hard, perhaps, to reconcile with the verisimilitude required by art, but at least productive of very noble and very beautiful results. First, one glimpse of Tartarus as conceived by Fénelon. It is the spectacle of kings who on earth abused their power, that Telemachus is beholding:– Telemachus observed the countenance of these criminals to be pale and ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they suffered at the heart. They looked inward with a self-abhorrence, now inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous spectres, and continually started up before them in all their enormity. They wished for a second death, that might separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits…

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Excerpt #11, from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin

…went on, however, very chearfully, put his printing-house in order, which had been in great confusion, and brought his hands by degrees to mind their business and to do it better. It was an odd thing to find an Oxford scholar in the situation of a bought servant. He was not more than eighteen years of age, and gave me this account of himself; that he was born in Gloucester, educated at a grammar-school there, had been distinguish’d among the scholars for some apparent superiority in performing his part, when they exhibited plays; belong’d to the Witty Club there, and had written some pieces in prose and verse, which were printed in the Gloucester newspapers; thence he was sent to Oxford; where he continued about a year, but not well satisfi’d, wishing of all things to see London, and become a player. At length, receiving his quarterly allowance of fifteen guineas, instead of discharging his debts he walk’d out of town, hid his gown in a furze bush, and footed it to London, where, having no friend to advise him, he fell into bad company, soon spent his guineas, found no means of being introduc’d among the players, grew necessitous, pawn’d his cloaths, and wanted bread. Walking the street very hungry, and not knowing what to do with himself, a crimp’s bill[51] was put into his hand, offering immediate entertainment and encouragement to such as would bind themselves to serve in America. He…

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Excerpt #12, from War and Peace, by graf Leo Tolstoy

…remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only saying now and then, “Oh, why did he go away?” But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face. CHAPTER XXV During that year after his son’s departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkónski’s health and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys—her nephew, little Nicholas, and religion—and these were the favorite subjects of the prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children. “You want to make him”—little Nicholas—“into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid,” he would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary’s presence…

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