Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:26

Excerpt #1, from Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda

…or make a person’s skin exude delightful fragrance." I looked directly at the saint; his quick gaze rested on mine. He was plump and bearded, with dark skin and large, gleaming eyes. “Son, I am glad to see you. Say what you want. Would you like some perfume?” “What for?” I thought his remark rather childish. “To experience the miraculous way of enjoying perfumes.” “Harnessing God to make odors?” “What of it? God makes perfume anyway.” “Yes, but He fashions frail bottles of petals for fresh use and discard. Can you materialize flowers?” “I materialize perfumes, little friend.” “Then scent factories will go out of business.” “I will permit them to keep their trade! My own purpose is to demonstrate the power of God.” “Sir, is it necessary to prove God? Isn’t He performing miracles in everything, everywhere?” “Yes, but we too should manifest some of His infinite creative variety.” “How long did it take to master your art?” “Twelve years.”…

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Excerpt #2, from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

…his dependent situation, to give into her schemes, and absent himself from Devonshire for a while. You will tell me, I know, that this may or may not have happened; but I will listen to no cavil, unless you can point out any other method of understanding the affair as satisfactory at this. And now, Elinor, what have you to say?” “Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer.” “Then you would have told me, that it might or might not have happened. Oh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your feelings! You had rather take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for misery for Marianne, and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the latter. You are resolved to think him blameable, because he took leave of us with less affection than his usual behaviour has shown. And is no allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits depressed by recent disappointment? Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely because they are not certainties? Is nothing due to the man whom we have all such reason to love, and no reason in the world to think ill of? To the possibility of motives unanswerable in themselves, though unavoidably secret for a while? And, after all, what is it you suspect him of?” “I can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed in…

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Excerpt #3, from A collection of Latin maxims and phrases literally translated, by John N. Cotterell

…=162. Nemo de domo suâ extrahi potest.= No man can be dragged out of his own house. (See Max. No. 62.) =163. Nemo debet bis punari, pro uno delicto.= No one should be twice punished for the same offence. (See next Max.) =* 164. Nemo debet bis vexari pro unâ et eâdem causâ.= No one ought to be tried twice (twice put to trouble) for one and the same cause. It is a well-established principle of Criminal Law, that where a man is indicted for an offence and acquitted, he cannot afterwards be again indicted for the same offence, if he might have been convicted at the onset by proof of the facts contained in the second indictment. (See last Max.) =* 165. Nemo est haeres viventis.= No man is heir of a living person. There may be either an heir apparent, as the eldest son, or an heir presumptive, as an only daughter. The question of actual heirship arises only on the death of the owner. No inheritance can vest, and no one can be a complete heir until the ancestor is dead. (See Max. No. 59.) =* 166. Nemo plus juris in alium transferre potest quam ipse habet.=…

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Excerpt #4, from Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post, by Thomas Rainey

…requires that the steamer shall be docked, however great the expense; and as these accidents are constantly occurring in even the best constructed and best regulated propellers, it follows that they must be constantly on the docks. This species of vessel being built necessarily narrower than the side-wheel, it rolls more, and is found to be an exceedingly disagreeable passenger vessel. Propellers have become deservedly unpopular the world over; and if it were possible for them to be faster than the side-wheel, it is hardly probable that first-class passengers would even then go by them, as they are known to be so exceedingly uncomfortable. The propeller, I have before said, is erroneously supposed to run more cheaply than the side-wheel. I think that I have shown that as a mail packet it will cost more to run it at a given speed. But there are certain cases in which it does run more cheaply; these are, however, only where the speed is low, and the machinery not geared, and where, as a consequence, sail can be used to more advantage than on a side-wheel. The economy is not the result of the application of the power by the screw, as compared with the side-wheel, but of the sail alone; and this economy is more or less, just as canvas is employed more or less in the propulsion. The screw is the better form of steamer for using sail; and the low speed at which propellers…

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Excerpt #5, from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1, by Edgar Allan Poe

…sung by the rabble upon the occasion of Aurelian, in the Sarmatic war, having slain, with his own hand, nine hundred and fifty of the enemy. THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. —Sir Thomas Browne. The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in…

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Excerpt #6, from The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy, by Ernst Haeckel

…Siebold proved at Munich these facts of miraculous conception in various insects, he was visited by the Catholic archbishop of the city, who expressed his gratification that there was now a scientific explanation possible of the conception of the Virgin Mary. Siebold had, unfortunately, to point out to him that the inference from the parthenogenesis of the articulate to that of the vertebrate was not valid, and that all mammals, like all other vertebrates, reproduce exclusively from impregnated ova. We also find parthenogenesis among the metaphyta, as in the chara crinita among the algæ, the antennaria alpina and the alchemilla vulgaris among the flowering plants. We are, as yet, ignorant for the most part of the causes of this lapse of fertilization. Some light has been thrown on it, however, by recent chemical experiments (the effect of sugar and other water-absorbing solutions), in which we have succeeded in parthenogenetically developing unfertilized ova. In the higher animals the complete maturity and development of the specific form are requisite for reproduction, but in many of the lower animals it has been observed recently that ovula and sperm-cells are even formed by the younger specimens in the larva stage. If impregnation takes place under these conditions, larvæ of the same form are born. And when these larvæ have afterwards reached…

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Excerpt #7, from David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

…I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never was before, and never have been since. ‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we had been in discussion together?’ As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had burnt them. He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and leave it a deeper red. ‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken leave of your senses?’ ‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog, I’ll know no more of you.’ ‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his…

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Excerpt #8, from Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

…If in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I’ll help it presently. God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both. Therefore, out of thy long-experienc’d time, Give me some present counsel, or behold ’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the empire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak. I long to die, If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy. FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris…

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Excerpt #9, 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 #10, from Bel Ami; Or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel, by Guy de Maupassant

…he will not speak of it; he can be depended upon; there is no danger." She had eaten all of her bonbons and began to toy with the buttons on his vest. Suddenly she drew a long hair out of the buttonhole and began to laugh. “See! Here is one of Madeleine’s hairs; you are a faithful husband!” Then growing serious, she examined the scarcely perceptible thread more closely and said: “It is not Madeleine’s, it is dark.” He smiled. “It probably belongs to the housemaid.” But she glanced at the vest with the care of a police-inspector and found a second hair twisted around a second button; then she saw a third; and turning pale and trembling somewhat, she exclaimed: “Oh, some woman has left hairs around all your buttons.” In surprise, he stammered: “Why you–you are mad.” She continued to unwind the hairs and cast them upon the floor. With her woman’s instinct she had divined their meaning and gasped in her anger, ready to cry: “She loves you and she wished you to carry away with you something of hers. Oh, you are a traitor.” She uttered a shrill, nervous cry: “Oh, it is an old woman’s hair–here is a white one–you have taken a fancy to an old woman now. Then you do not need me–keep the other one.” She rose….

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Excerpt #11, from Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel, by Bertrand Russell

…language of polite letters and learning. National consciousness hardly existed. Then a series of great men created a self-respect in Germany by their achievements in poetry, music, philosophy, and science. But politically German nationalism was only created by Napoleon’s oppression and the uprising of 1813. After centuries during which every disturbance of the peace of Europe began with a French or Swedish or Russian invasion of Germany, the Germans discovered that by sufficient effort and union they could keep foreign armies off their territory. But the effort required had been too great to cease when its purely defensive purpose had been achieved by the defeat of Napoleon. Now, a hundred years later, they are still engaged in the same movement, which has become one of aggression and conquest. Whether we are now seeing the end of the movement it is not yet possible to guess. If men had any strong sense of a community of nations, nationalism would serve to define the boundaries of the various nations. But because men only feel community within their own nation, nothing but force is able to make them respect the rights of other nations, even when they are asserting exactly similar rights on their own behalf. Analogous development is to be expected, with the course of time, in the conflict between capital and labor which has existed since the growth of the industrial system, and in the conflict between men and…

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Excerpt #12, from Psmith, Journalist, by P. G. Wodehouse

…gloomy turn, say to yourselves, ‘All is well. Psmith is keeping a watchful eye upon our interests.’" “All the same, I should like to see this W. Windsor,” said Mr. Asher. Psmith shook his head. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “I speak in your best interests. Comrade Windsor is a man of the fiercest passions. He cannot brook interference. Were you to question the wisdom of his plans, there is no knowing what might not happen. He would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had cooled off, but would that be any consolation to his victim? I think not. Of course, if you wish it, I could arrange a meeting–” Mr. Asher said no, he thought it didn’t matter. “I guess I can wait,” he said. “That,” said Psmith approvingly, “is the right spirit. Wait. That is the watch-word. And now,” he added, rising, “I wonder if a bit of lunch somewhere might not be a good thing? We have had an interesting but fatiguing little chat. Our tissues require restoring. If you gentlemen would care to join me–” Ten minutes later the company was seated in complete harmony round a table at the Knickerbocker. Psmith, with the dignified bonhomie…

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