Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:09

Excerpt #1, from In Great Waters: Four Stories, by Thomas A. Janvier

…close over beyond a still sea and a sun-bright sky a storm is cooking up that will kill him if it can. And even when he feels the coming of it–if he be well to seaward, or if he be tempted by the fish being plenty and by the bareness of his own pockets to hold on in the face of it–he must have more in his head than any coast pilot has if he is to win home to Yarmouth Harbour or to Lowestoft Roads. For God in his cruelty has set more traps to kill seafarers off this easterly outjut of England, I do believe, than He has set anywhere else in all the world: there being from Covehithe Ness northward to the Winterton Overfalls nothing but a maze of deadly shoals–all cut up by channels in which there is no sea-room–that fairly makes you queazy to think about when you are coming shoreward in a northeast gale. And as if that were not enough to make sure of man-food for the fishes, the currents that swirl and play among these shoals are up to some fresh wickedness with every hour of the tide-run and with every half shift of wind. Whether you make in for Yarmouth by Hemesby Hole to the north, or by the Hewett Channel to the south, or split the difference by running through Caister Road, it is all one: twisting about the Overfalls and the Middle Cross Sand and the South Scroby, there the currents are. What they will be doing with you, or how they will be doing it, you can’t even make a good guess at; all that you can know for certain…

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Excerpt #2, from The Astral Plane, by C. W. Leadbeater

…higher in intellect, and therefore the more blame-worthy, stand the Tibetan black magicians, who are often, though incorrectly, called by Europeans Dûgpas–a title properly belonging, as is quite correctly explained by Surgeon-Major Waddell in his recent work on The Buddhism of Tibet, only to the Bhotanese subdivision of the great Kargyu sect, which is part of what may be called the semi-reformed school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dûgpas no doubt deal in Tântrik magic to a considerable extent, but the real red-hatted entirely unreformed sect is that of the Ñin-mâ-pa, though far beyond them in a still lower depth lie the Bön-pa–the votaries of the aboriginal religion, who have never accepted any form of Buddhism at all. It must not, however, be supposed that all Tibetan sects except the Gelûgpa are necessarily and altogether evil; a truer view would be that as the rules of other sects permit considerably greater laxity of life and practice, the proportion of self-seekers among them is likely to be much larger than among the stricter reformers. The investigator will occasionally meet on the astral plane students of occultism from all parts of the world (belonging to lodges quite unconnected with the Masters of whom Theosophists know most) who are in many cases most earnest and self-sacrificing seekers after truth. It is noteworthy, however, that all such lodges are at least aware of the existence of the great…

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Excerpt #3, from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, by Charles Darwin

…most naturalists would advance, namely, that specific characters are more variable than generic, because they are taken from parts of less physiological importance than those commonly used for classing genera. I believe this explanation is partly, yet only indirectly, true; I shall, however, have to return to this subject in our chapter on Classification. It would be almost superfluous to adduce evidence in support of the above statement, that specific characters are more variable than generic; but I have repeatedly noticed in works on natural history, that when an author has remarked with surprise that some important organ or part, which is generally very constant throughout large groups of species, has differed considerably in closely-allied species, that it has, also, been variable in the individuals of some of the species. And this fact shows that a character, which is generally of generic value, when it sinks in value and becomes only of specific value, often becomes variable, though its physiological importance may remain the same. Something of the same kind applies to monstrosities: at least Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire seems to entertain no doubt, that the more an organ normally differs in the different species of the same group, the more subject it is to individual anomalies. On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,…

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Excerpt #4, from Latin for Beginners, by Benjamin L. D’Ooge

…pugnātum est Dēnique tamen mulieres terga vertērunt et fugā salūtem petiērunt. Multae autem captae sunt, in quō numerō erat ipsa Hippolytē. Herculēs postquam balteum accēpit, omnibus captīvīs lībertātem dedit. [Footnote 1: A fabled tribe of warlike women living in Asia Minor.] [Footnote 2: «omnīnō», etc., to have consisted entirely of women.] [Footnote 3: «Amāzonibus», §501.14.] [Illustration: HERCULES ET CERBERUS] THE DESCENT TO HADES AND THE DOG CER´BERUS Iamque ūnus modo ē duodecim labōribus relinquēbātur sed inter omnīs hic erat difficillimus. Iussus est enim canem Cerberum[4] ex Orcō in lūcem trahere. Ex Orcō autem nēmō anteā reverterat. Praetereā Cerberus erat mōnstrum maximē horribile et tria capita habēbat. Herculēs postquam imperia Eurystheī accēpit, statim profectus est et in Orcum dēscendit. Ibi vērō nōn sine summō periculō Cerberum manibus rapuit et ingentī cum labōre ex Orcō in lūcem et adurbem Eurystheī trāxit. Sic duodecim laborēs illī[5] intrā duodecim annōs cōnfectī sunt. Dēmum post longam vītam Herculēs ā deīs receptus est et Iuppiter fīliō suō dedit immortālitātem. [Footnote 4: The dog Cerberus guarded the gate of Orcus, the abode of the dead.] [Footnote 5: «illī», those famous.]…

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Excerpt #5, from Don Juan, by Baron George Gordon Byron Byron

…But I will fall at least as fell my hero; Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign; Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go, With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe. Sir Walter reign’d before me; Moore and Campbell Before and after; but now grown more holy, The Muses upon Sion’s hill must ramble With poets almost clergymen, or wholly; And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley, Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts, A modern Ancient Pistol—by the hilts? Then there’s my gentle Euphues, who, they say, Sets up for being a sort of moral me; He’ll find it rather difficult some day To turn out both, or either, it may be. Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway; And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three; And that deep-mouth’d Boeotian ‘Savage Landor’ Has taken for a swan rogue Southey’s gander. John Keats, who was kill’d off by one critique,…

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Excerpt #6, from From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, by H. P. Blavatsky

…for an aggressive one, “why am I, I who have studied the most modern ideas of Western science, I who believe in its representatives–why am I suspected, pray, by Miss X—- of belonging to the tribe of the ignorant and superstitious Hindus? Why does she think that our perfected scientific theories are superstitions, and we ourselves a fallen inferior race?” Sham Rao stood before us with tears in his eyes. We were at a loss what to answer him, being confused to the last degree by this outburst. “Mind you, I do not proclaim our popular beliefs to be infallible dogmas. I consider them as mere theories, and try to the best of my ability to reconcile the ancient and the modern science. I formulate hypotheses just like Darwin and Haeckel. Besides, if I understood rightly, Miss X—- is a spiritualist, so she believes in bhutas. And, believing that a bhuta is capable of penetrating the body of a medium, how can she deny that a bhuta, and more so a less sinful soul, may enter the body of a vampire-bat?” I own, this logic was a little too condensed for us, and so, avoiding a direct answer to a metaphysical question of such delicacy, we tried to apologize and excuse Miss X—-’s rudeness as well as we could. “She did not mean to offend you,” we said, "she only repeated a calumny, familiar to every European. Besides, if she had taken the trouble to…

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Excerpt #7, from Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills, by Virgil M. Harris

…himself and the fortune he had amassed, but if he entertained any malicious sentiments against those to whom he was obliged to leave what he could not take away with him, he seems to have been fully justified in the somewhat severe animadversions he has passed on some of his legatees. To a lady relative, who had been full of attentions for him, he left a broken cup, jeering her with the taunt that while she thought she was taking him in he was laughing in his sleeve at the grimace she would make when she found that it was he who had got all her little gifts, her smiles and favors out of her, knowing all the while that he had no intention of repaying them as she expected. “As for you,” he says at the end of the will, “you, my good and admirable valet, who have so long taken me for your dupe, you will now learn that it is you who have been mine; when at the conclusion of my dinner you thought I was applauding your economy and your zeal, in carefully putting together the remains of bottles of wine and keeping them for the next meal, it never occurred to you that I was well aware you took for your own use whole bottles. When you came with tearful eyes and coaxing voice to wait on me the moment I was suffering from any trifling indisposition, presenting to me my tisanes with an assumed air of condolence and anxiety, you little thought how my instinct,…

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Excerpt #8, from History for ready reference, Volume 3 (of 6), Greece to Nibelungen, by J. N. Larned

…French in Hindostan at the beginning of the war had made all direct competition between the two nations in that country impossible, but it was still in the power of the French to stimulate the hostility of the native princes, and the ablest of all these, Hyder Ali, the great ruler of Mysore, was once more in the field. Since his triumph over the English, in 1769, he had acquired much additional territory from the Mahrattas. He had immensely strengthened his military forces, both in numbers and discipline. … For some years he showed no wish to quarrel with the English, but when a Mahratta chief invaded his territory they refused to give him the assistance they were bound by the express terms of the treaty of 1769 to afford, they rejected or evaded more than one subsequent proposal of alliance, and they pursued a native policy in some instances hostile to his interest. {1725} As a great native sovereign, too, he had no wish to see the balance of power established by the rivalry between the British and French destroyed. … Mysore was swarming with French adventurers. The condition of Europe made it scarcely possible that England could send any fresh forces, and Hyder…

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Excerpt #9, from Science and the modern world: Lowell Lectures 1925, by Alfred North Whitehead

…experience. This comparison takes the form of satisfying the demands of the Italian scholastic divines whom Paul Sarpi mentioned. They asked that reason should be used. Faith in reason is the trust that the ultimate natures of things lie together in a harmony which excludes mere arbitrariness. It is the faith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery. The faith in the order of nature which has made possible the growth of science is a particular example of a deeper faith. This faith cannot be justified by any inductive generalisation. It springs from direct inspection of the nature of things as disclosed in our own immediate present experience. There is no parting from your own shadow. To experience this faith is to know that in being ourselves we are more than ourselves: to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is, yet sounds the utmost depths of reality: to know that detached details merely in order to be themselves demand that they should find themselves in a system of things: to know that this system includes the harmony of logical rationality, and the harmony of aesthetic achievement: to know that, while the harmony of logic lies upon the universe as an iron necessity, the aesthetic harmony stands before it as a living ideal moulding the general flux in its broken progress towards finer, subtler issues. CHAPTER II…

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Excerpt #10, from Literary Lapses, by Stephen Leacock

…dear little romp, had hidden Mr. Jones’s hat; so papa said that he must stay, and invited him to a pipe and a chat. Papa had the pipe and gave Jones the chat, and still he stayed. Every moment he meant to take the plunge, but couldn’t. Then papa began to get very tired of Jones, and fidgeted and finally said, with jocular irony, that Jones had better stay all night, they could give him a shake-down. Jones mistook his meaning and thanked him with tears in his eyes, and papa put Jones to bed in the spare room and cursed him heartily. After breakfast next day, papa went off to his work in the City, and left Jones playing with the baby, broken-hearted. His nerve was utterly gone. He was meaning to leave all day, but the thing had got on his mind and he simply couldn’t. When papa came home in the evening he was surprised and chagrined to find Jones still there. He thought to jockey him out with a jest, and said he thought he’d have to charge him for his board, he! he! The unhappy young man stared wildly for a moment, then wrung papa’s hand, paid him a month’s board in advance, and broke down and sobbed like a child. In the days that followed he was moody and unapproachable. He lived, of course, entirely in the drawing-room, and the lack of air and exercise began to tell sadly on his health. He passed his time in drinking tea and looking at the photographs. He would stand for hours gazing at the…

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Excerpt #11, from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall

…“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once. “How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.” “I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.” His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. “Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.” “No, I would prefer to be doing something else.” “How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?” “Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.” “Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him,…

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Excerpt #12, from Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

…open window. Would his sister have to go and earn money? She was still a child of seventeen, her life up till then had been very enviable, consisting of wearing nice clothes, sleeping late, helping out in the business, joining in with a few modest pleasures and most of all playing the violin. Whenever they began to talk of the need to earn money, Gregor would always first let go of the door and then throw himself onto the cool, leather sofa next to it, as he became quite hot with shame and regret. He would often lie there the whole night through, not sleeping a wink but scratching at the leather for hours on end. Or he might go to all the effort of pushing a chair to the window, climbing up onto the sill and, propped up in the chair, leaning on the window to stare out of it. He had used to feel a great sense of freedom from doing this, but doing it now was obviously something more remembered than experienced, as what he actually saw in this way was becoming less distinct every day, even things that were quite near; he had used to curse the ever-present view of the hospital across the street, but now he could not see it at all, and if he had not known that he lived in Charlottenstrasse, which was a quiet street despite being in the middle of the city, he could have thought that he was looking out the window at a barren waste where the grey sky and the grey earth mingled inseparably. His observant…

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