Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Audiobooks Narrated by Russell Stamets
Browse audiobooks narrated by Russell Stamets, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
"The Maha Ramayana, Greater Book, and it describes the inner life of Rama, telling how he triumphed over foes within himself, and so prepared to fight and conquer, for the helping of the world, the outer evil forces rampant in that time. The story of this Greater Book is here essayed in brief"
" THE greater part of the unpublished remains of Anatole France consists of Dialogues which he intended to entitle Under the Rose.
He liked that old-fashioned expression. In the course of an essay on the Emperor Julian in Life and Letters, he says :
“ One evening I heard Monsieur Renan say under the rose, ‘ Julian ! Why, the man was a reactionary.’ ”
But nowadays the phrase is seldom used, and its real significance is almost forgotten. The big dictionaries of the day know it not.
He had, as a matter of fact, begun to write these Dialogues just after the war, and he had, no doubt, been prompted to enroll them beneath the emblem of Peace. The reader will observe in due course how one of his characters alludes to this auspicious date. “ Let us celebrate tog'ether,” so the words run, “ in these days of peace and repose, here beneath the sacred olive, the serene orgies of metaphysics. Let us drink our fill of wisdom.”"
" Of the original source of the stories Bishop Steere could himself give no complete account. They were dictated to him by natives of Zanzibar ; and as the Swahili race is of mixed Arab and Negro descent, so its stories, though African in outline, are largely tinged with Arab colour.
The stories were first published in Swahili, in order to aid and interest students of that language. The present translation of a selected few is now put forth, with illustrations, in the hope that it may attract those who are not acquainted with the original language. "
" If you want anything, you must in essence become that thing. Then the supreme law of attraction will be put into operation which will attract your desire. Your mental energy, plus your emotional nature must be focused in the idea of your creation, first in the unseen; then with the proper physical application you will be on the way to the realization of your desires.
Herein you will find the real secrets of The Law of Attraction."
" We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Mystery of Marie Roget
The Case of the Purloined Letter
The Gold Bug"
" In selecting the tales that form this volume, the foremost place has been allotted to two romances of Death, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “ Ligeia.” The latter was considered by Poe himself the finest of all his tales, and in a well-known letter to Lowell he places close beside it ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.” In both his singular genius finds full expression. They are followed by two old-world romances, laid in Rome and Venice, rich in color and subtly varied atmosphere, and vibrating with passion. Of the tales whose theme is the guilty conscience, Poe thought “ William Wilson ”’ and ‘The Black Cat” the best. The briefer one is given here. The “ MS. Found in a Bottle’ is the earliest and in some respects the most purely imaginative of his pseudoscientific stories. The tales of ratiocination— to use Poe’s phrase for what would now be termed detective stories—are represented by:“The Gold-Bug,” a tale less poignant than “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and perhaps less flawless in its art than ‘‘ The Purloined Letter,’ yet one of the most celebrated short stories ever written."
"The Fatal Move
The Vengeance of the Dead
The Fiend That Walks Behind
The Homing Bone
Professor Danvers’ Disappearance
The Rejuvenation of Ivan Smithovitch"
"I have strung these things together on a slight enough thread; but as the things themselves are slight, it is possible that the thread (and the metaphor) may manage to hang together. These notes range over very variegated topics and in many cases were made at very different times. They concern all sorts of things from lady barristers to cave-men, and from psycho-analysis to free verse. Yet they have this amount of unity in their wandering, that they all imply that it is only a more traditional spirit that is truly able to wander. The wild theorists of our time are quite unable to wander. When they talk of making new roads, they are only making new ruts. Each of them is necessarily imprisoned in his own curious cosmos; in other words, he is limited by the very largeness of his own generalization. The explanations of the Marxian must not go outside economics; and the student of Freud is forbidden to forget sex. To see only the fanciful side of these serious sects may seem a very frivolous pleasure—and I will not dispute that these are very frivolous criticisms. I only submit that this frivolity is the last lingering form of freedom."
"Democritus. Bring the Stranger, bring the Stranger. Let us see how he is put together. I smell one goodish ingredient, but the compound is new-fangled, yes {sniffing), and ill mixed. Alcihiades. You can’t possibly scent him at this distance. Not even a dog could. For a Christian he is rather well washed. Democritus. Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him. The Stranger might be as clean as a river-god, who cannot live out of running water, and I should not be prevented from discerning the odour of his thoughts. Your barbarians, I know, have no proper regimen. The few bathe too often, out of luxury or fussiness, perhaps in steam or in hot water ; and the many never bathe at all. Thus those who wash among them are quite washed out, and yet the sodden smell of them is perceptible and most unpleasant. But it was not of their soft bodies that I was speaking, but of their rotten minds. Did you never hear that a philosophy can be smelt ?"
"My young readers ought to be told that the poem of the ' Mad Orlando ' is a continuation by Ariosto of a poem by Boiardo, an earlier poet, called ' Orlando in Love.' This helps to account for the abruptness with which the characters appear on the scene, and for the allusions to adventures in which they have taken part in an earlier period of their history. I have been obliged to retain some few of these, which abound in Ariosto — such as the allusions to an earlier visit of Angelica to Europe with her brother Argalia, who was slain by Terrau, and whose helmet was carried off by that knight; to the magic ring stolen from Angelica in Albracca bv Brunello, who also on that occasion committed the thefts mentioned in the story of ' Ruggiero and Bradamante'; and others which refer to a time when Angelica loved Rinaldo and he disliked her, a state of things completely changed before the first story opens. This little explanation may, I hope, make all such allusions tolerably intelligible."
"In offering this volume to teachers, my chief aim is to provide material for narration which shall deal, not with things temporal but with the “ Eternal Verities.” These, if presented to our boys and girls in dramatic form, at the most impressionable period of their lives, will sink deeply into their minds. When presented in more direct and didactic fashion, the same truths often fail to impress. These stories of the Buddha are not for one age or one country, but for all time and for the world.
I have suggested their meaning in the index to enable teachers to -see the contents at a glance. I strongly urge that little or no explanation should be offered to the children themselves. They will be sufficiently interested in the dramatic setting to absorb (unconsciously) the meaning of the story.
The book is not intended primarily for children to read but for teachers to use in telling these tales, but' when they have received the dramatic impression through the telling, they will have an added interest in reading the book for themselves.
I have purposely avoided using illustrations to these stories. I want the children to make the mental picture suggested to them by the spoken word, and if they read the story afterwards, I do not wish to force them to abandon their own conception and adopt a general one, because this would mean eliminating one of the most potent educational factors in the telling of the story."
Join our community for the latest bookish news, reading recommendations, exclusive opening extracts, author events and competitions. It\'s all free. And enter a monthly draw to win a £50 Gift Card. See past winners here
