True North: 481 books

I have found in an old diary a quotation from Stephane Mallarm saying that his epoch was troubled by the trembling of the veil of the Temple. As those words were still true, during the years of my life described in this book, I have chosen The Trembling of the Veil for its title.

THE modern business man is the true heir of the old magicians. Every thing he touches seems to increase ten or a hundredfold in value and usefulness. All the old methods, old tools, old instruments have yielded to his transforming spell or else been discarded for new and more effective substitutes....

A few leading thoughts culled from such men as Tylor, Lubbock, Wilson, McLennan, Frazer, and Boyd Dawkins, etc., the experiences of our modern travellers among primitive races, Indian and European folk-lore, the world's credulities past and present, have helped me to fix the idea that amongst the true historians of mankind the children of our streets find a place.

When socialism, as thus defined, is spoken of as a thing that exists--as a thing that has risen and is spreading--two ideas are apt to suggest themselves to the minds of all parties equally, of which one coincides with facts, while the other does not, having, indeed, thus far at all events, no appreciable...

"A word spoken in season," says the wise man, "how good it is!" If this be true regarding the utterances of uninspired lips, with what devout and paramount interest must we invest the sayings of Incarnate Truth--"the WORDS OF JESUS!"

The members of Ku Klux Klan are nowadays inclined to consider that their order comprehended all that took shape in resistance to the Africanization of society and government during the Reconstruction period. As one ex-member said: "Nearly all prominent men--ex-Confederates--in all the Southern...

What thou seest when thou dost wake,  Do it for thy true love take;  Love and languish for his sake;  Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,  Pard, or boar with bristled hair,  In thy eye what shall appear,  When thou wak'st, it is thy dear;  Wake when some vile thing is near

The history of the borders is filled with legends of the sufferings of isolated families, during the troubled scenes of colonial warfare. Those which we now offer to the reader, are distinctive in many of their leading facts, if not rigidly true in the details. The first alone is necessary to the legitimate objects of fiction.

What Froude says of history is true also of astronomy: it is the most impressive where it transcends explanation. It is not the mathematics of astronomy, but the wonder and the mystery that seize upon the imagination. The calculation of an eclipse owes all its prestige to the sublimity of its data;...

This classic collection of stories from Jerome K. Jerome include ON BEING IDLE, ON BEING IN LOVE, ON BEING IN THE BLUES, ON BEING HARD UP and many others.

Travelers who go into Scotland take a great interest in visiting, among other places, a certain room in the ruins of an old palace, where Queen Mary was born. Queen Mary was very beautiful, but she was very unfortunate and unhappy. Every body takes a strong interest in her story, and this interest attaches, in some degree, to the room where her sad and sorrowful life was begun.

In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons--spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.

If a new translation of Herodotus does not justify itself, it will hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it was needed may be left here without discussion. The aim of the translator has been above all things faithfulness--faithfulness to the manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to the meaning of the Author.

Here I offer to the public the life of Jean-Henri Fabre; at once an admiring commentary upon his work and an act of pious homage, such as ought to be offered, while he lives, to the great naturalist who is even to-day so little known.