Classics Books

There is a firm in Chicago, with a most interesting bit of inside history. It is not a large firm. Ten years ago it consisted of one man. Today there are some three hundred employees, but it is still a one-man business. It has never employed a salesman on the road; the head of the firm has never been out to call on any of his customers. But here is a singular thing: you may drop in to see a business... more...

Preface. Looking Backward was a small book, and I was not able to get into it all I wished to say on the subject. Since it was published what was left out of it has loomed up as so much more important than what it contained that I have been constrained to write another book. I have taken the date of Looking Backward, the year 2000, as that of Equality, and have utilized the framework of the former... more...

INTRODUCTION Life was formerly regarded as a phenomenon entirely separated from the other phenomena of Nature, and even up to the present time Science has proved wholly unable to give a definition of Life; evolution, nutrition, sensibility, growth, organization, none of these, not even the faculty of reproduction, is the exclusive appanage of life. Living things are made of the same chemical elements... more...

INTRODUCTION. From Pillars of Society to John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen's plays had followed each other at regular intervals of two years, save when his indignation over the abuse heaped upon Ghosts reduced to a single year the interval between that play and An Enemy of the People. John Gabriel Borkman having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in 1898; but Christmas came and brought no... more...

CHAPTER I THE BEEMAN The road was a sunny, dusty one, leading upward through Medford Valley, with half-wooded hills on each side whose far outline quivered in the hot, breathless air of mid-June afternoon. Oliver Peyton seemed to have no regard for heat or dust, however, but trudged along with such a determined stride that people passing turned to look after him, and more than one swift motor car... more...

MARLBOROUGH. No. I. Alexander the Great said, when he approached the tomb of Achilles, "Oh! fortunate youth, who had a Homer to be the herald of your fame!" "And well did he say so," says the Roman historian: "for, unless the Iliad had been written, the same earth which covered his body would have buried his name." Never was the truth of these words more clearly evinced than in... more...

I. THE PARIS-VENTIMIGLIA EXPRESSMARSEILLES!The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses, had stopped a moment at Marseilles. It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars, with their bevelled-glass windows, dripped water from all parts; the locomotive puffed, resting from its run, and the bellows between car and car, like great accordeons, had black drops... more...

PREFACE The translations included in this volume were written at various times during the last ten years for use in connexion with College Lectures, and a long holiday, for which I have to thank the Trustees of the Balliol College Endowment Fund, as well as the Master and Fellows of Balliol College, has enabled me to revise them and to furnish them with brief introductions and notes. Only those... more...

INTRODUCTION Anne Brontë serves a twofold purpose in the study of what the Brontës wrote and were.  In the first place, her gentle and delicate presence, her sad, short story, her hard life and early death, enter deeply into the poetry and tragedy that have always been entwined with the memory of the Brontës, as women and as writers; in the second, the books and poems that she wrote serve as matter... more...

Isaiah 1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.1:2Hear, heavens,and listen, earth; for Yahweh has spoken:I have nourished and brought up children,and they have rebelled against me.1:3The ox knows his owner,and the donkey his master's crib;but Israel doesn't know,my people... more...