Excerpt: Part I, Chapter 1; HAPPY families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys? house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife th...

Fiction

Excerpt: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

Excerpt: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

The killing fields of Troy.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this ?landowner?for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate...

Excerpt: It was Madame Nilsson?s first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as ?an exceptionally brilliant audience? had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient ?Brown coupe? To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one?s own carriage; and departure by the same me...

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast ...

Excerpt: Chapter 1; DESCRIPTION OF FARMEROAK -- AN INCIDENT -- When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgement, easy motions, proper dress, and general g...

The new fellow, standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. ...

Supplemental catalog subcollection information: Religious Literature Collection; Theological Literature

Description: Some have it that romantic love was an invention of the Middle Ages. If so, then the true story of Pierre Abelard and Heloise is one of the templates of this narrative. Both Abelard and Heloise were prominent intellectuals of twelfth century

Excerpt: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty?s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed?st thy light?s flame with self?substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the world?s fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest th...

Excerpt: In the days when the spinning?wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses ? and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread?lace, had their toy spinning?wheels of polished oak ? there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country?folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd?s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien?looking men a...

Description: Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King's Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London. After his earlier education at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so established together in a relation of patron and client....

Excerpt: The Republic by Plato.