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Excerpt: Preface to Fanny?s First Play. Fanny?s First Play, being but a potboiler, needs no preface. But its lesson is not, I am sorry to say, unneeded. Mere morality, or the substitution of custom for conscience was once accounted a shameful and cynical thing: people talked of right and wrong, of honor and dishonor, of sin and grace, of salvation and damnation, not of morality and immorality. The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car. Nowadays we do not seem to know that there is any other test of conduct except morality; and the result is that the young had better have their souls awakened by disgrace, capture by the police, and a month?s hard labor, than drift along from their cradles to their graves doing what other people do for no other reason than that other people do it, and knowing nothing of good and evil, of courage and cowardice, or indeed anything but how to keep hunger and concupiscence and fashionable dressing within the bounds of good taste except when their excesses can be concealed....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she was still about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the approaching event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the only person who felt perfectly calm and happy....

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Excerpt: The Book of Nehemiah, the Sixteenth Book of the King James Version of the Bible.

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Introduction: ?For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost; and is found.? He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation....

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Excerpt: Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert.

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Introduction: Queen Elizabeth herself, and London as it was in her time, with sketches of Elizabethan England, and of its great men in the way of social dignity, are here brought home to us by Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch?s house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it....

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Excerpt: Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

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Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 4 TARAS BULBA.............................................................. 13 ST. JOHN?S EVE ......................................................... 130 THE CLOAK ................................................................ 146 HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED .................. 176 THE MYSTERIOUS PORTRAIT ................................ 223 THE CALASH .............................................................. 270...

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Excerpt: Wilhelm Tell by Johann Christoph Freidrich von Schiller, translated by Theodore Martin.

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THE SIXTY-SECOND BOOK OF THE HOLY BIBLE CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED & REVISED SET FORTH IN 1611 AND COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE KING JAMES VERSION ...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life -- 2. (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) -- 3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ -- 4. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full -- 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all -- 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth -- 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin....

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Excerpt: The Divine Comedy, Volume One, Hell [The Inferno] by Dante Aligheri, trans Charles Eliot Norton.

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Contents INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................7 AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY .......................................................... 14 HELL .............................................................................. 16 CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world. ....................................... 16 CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.?Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.?Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed. ................ 19 CANTO III. The gate of Hell.?Virgil lends Dante in.?The punishment of the neither good nor bad.?Aeheron, and the sinners on its bank.?Charon.?Earthquake.?Dante swoons. ................................................................. 22 CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.?Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, cont...

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Excerpt: ACT I. (SCENE.--A large room looking upon a garden door in the left-hand wall, and two in the right. In the middle of the room, a round table with chairs set about it, and books, magazines and newspapers upon it. In the foreground on the left, a window, by which is a small sofa with a work-table in front of it. At the back the room opens into a conservatory rather smaller than the room. From the right-hand side of this, a door leads to the garden. Through the large panes of glass that form the outer wall of the conservatory, a gloomy fjord landscape can be discerned, half-obscured by steady rain....

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Summary from The Path of Prosperity: I looked around upon the world, and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering. And I looked for the cause. I looked around, but could not find it; I looked in books, but could not find it; I looked within, and found there both the cause and the self-made nature of that cause. I looked again, and deeper, and found the remedy. I found one Law, the Law of Love; one Life, the Life of adjustment to that Law; one Truth, the truth of a conquered mind and a quiet and obedient heart. And I dreamed of writing a book which should help men and women, whether rich or poor, learned or unlearned, worldly or unworldly, to find within themselves the source of all success, all happiness, all accomplishment, all truth. And the dream remained with me, and at last became substantial; and now I send it forth into the world on its mission of healing and blessedness, knowing that it cannot fail to reach the homes and hearts of those who are waiting and ready to receive it....

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Advice, Philosophy

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Excerpt: Overruled by George Bernard Shaw.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Princess Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky?s was seriously ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts--a larger and smaller trousseau--the princess consented to have the wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as, immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be wanted....

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Excerpt: This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form. If our silly censorship would permit its performance, it might possibly help to set right-side-up the perverted conscience and re-invigorate the starved self-respect of our considerable class of loose-lived playgoers whose point of honor is to deride all official and conventional sermons....

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Excerpt: GEORGIC I What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer; What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;-- Such are my themes....

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Contents THE GEORGICS............................................................................3 GEORGIC I.....................................................................................3 GEORGIC II...............................................................................18 GEORGIC III.............................................................................35 GEORGIC IV...............................................................................51 THE ECLOGUES................................................................................68 ECLOGUE I..................................................................................68 ECLOGUE II................................................................................72 ECLOGUE III...............................................................................75 ECLOGUE IV...............................................................................82 ECLOGUE V.................................................................................84 ECLOGUE VI...............................................................................88 ECLOGUE VII....................

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Excerpt: The Divine Comedy, Volume Two, Purgatory [Purgatorio] by Dante Aligheri, trans Charles Eliot Norton.

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Contents PURGATORY................................................................... 6 CANTO I. Invocation to the Muses.?Dawn of Easter on the shore of Purgatory.?The Four Stars.?Cato.?The cleansing of Dante from the stains of Hell. ............................................................................................................ 6 CANTO II. Sunrise.?The Poets on the shore.?Coming of a boat, guided by an angel, bearing souls to Purgatory.? Their landing.?Casella and his song.?Cato hurries the souls to the mountain. ................................. 10 CANTO III. Ante-Purgatory.?Souls of those who have died in contumacy of the Church.? Manfred. ............. 13 CANTO IV. Ante-Purgatory.?Ascent to a shelf of the mountain.?The negligent, who postponed repentance to the last hour.?Belacqua. ..................................................................................................................................... 16 CANTO V. Ante-Purgatory.?Spirits who had delayed repentance, and met with death by violence, but died repentant.?Jacopo del Cassero.?Buonconte da Montefeltro?Via de? Tolomei. ................................

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Excerpt: Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics by George Bernard Shaw.

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Excerpt: CHAPTER I; PRELIMINARY -- CONSIDERING our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and watertransport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of ...

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Table of Contents: BOOK I 3 -- CHAPTER I ?PRELIMINARY, 3 -- CHAPTER II ?EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES, 7 -- CHAPTER III ?REMINISCENCES, 11 -- CHAPTER IV? CHARACTERISTICS, 19 -- CHAPTER V? THE WORLD IN CLOTHES, 24 -- CHAPTER VI? APRONS, 29 -- CHAPTER VII? MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL, 31 -- CHAPTER VIII? THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES, 34 -- CHAPTER IX? ADAMITISM, 39 -- CHAPTER X? PURE REASON, 43 -- CHAPTER XI? PROSPECTIVE, 47 -- BOOK II 55 -- CHAPTER I ?GENESIS, 55 -- CHAPTER II ?IDYLLIC, 61 -- CHAPTER III ?PEDAGOGY, 68 -- CHAPTER IV? GETTING UNDER WAY, 79 -- CHAPTER V? ROMANCE, 88 -- CHAPTER VI? SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRO? CKH, 97 -- CHAPTER VII? THE EVERLASTING NO, 104 -- CHAPTER VIII? CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE, 110 -- CHAPTER IX? THE EVERLASTING YEA, 118 -- CHAPTER X? PAUSE, 126 -- BOOK III 133 -- CHAPTER I ?INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY, 133 -- CHAPTER II ?CHURCH-CLOTHES, 137...