RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account. BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
If these caustic definitions catch your fancy, you'd enjoy The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.
He was a columnist with the San Francisco News Letter, a weekly paper which was a business publication aimed at the corporate sector. However, it had a column entitled Town Crier which featured satirical asides and comments in a lighter vein. Bierce went on to edit the paper. His acerbic wit a...
1897 erschien dieser auf den Kopf gestellte Bildungsroman, in dem der Titelheld seinen Niedergang als Dichter und Rezensent zugleich auf einer kleinen vernachlässigten Bühne feiert. "Stilpe" gilt als Grundlage für das erste deutsche Kabarett, das Überbrettl.
Psalm 22 appears as Psalm 23 in modern English translations of the Bible. – Psalmi XXII Bibliae Sacrae Vulgatae, recitatus in lingua Latina.
Father Farmer was a real life missionary priest during the 1700’s in what is now New England. In 1779 he was appointed as one of the first trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. He also had a reputation as a philosopher and astronomer in his time, and was a member of the American Philosophical Society. (Introduction by Maria Therese)No on-line text available.
Week by week, year by year, his fame as an advisor and a confessor grew. People flocked from great distances to his little church, and privately, among themselves, they called him “saint”. The devil, furious at the ever-increasing number of souls being saved by the Cure, tempted and taunted the priest and even persecuted him physically. But Satan found he had met his match.
This children’s biography of Father Damien of Molokai was written by Eva K. Betz, a prolific Catholic writer of history and biography books for children. (Introduction from an original dust jacket and Maria Therese)
Walter Besant was a novelist and historian, and his topographical and historical writings, ranging from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century, were probably best known through the detailed 10-volume Survey of London published after his death.
This earlier single volume covers, in less depth, the whole period from prehistory until the 19th century. The book appears originally to have been written for boys, and, indeed, the chapters are called “Lessons”. However, it is a very readable history and provides a fascinating insight into both London’s past and the government of the City at the time the book was written (1894).
A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American writer Henry James in the same year.
On Loving God is one of the best-known and most influential works of Medieval Christian mysticism. Written at the request of one of the cardinals of Rome, it describes the four “levels” of love for God, and puts Christian devotion in the context of God’s love for mankind.
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part 1 (Commonly called “Treatise” when referring to Berkeley’s works) is a 1710 work by the Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. It largely seeks to refute the claims made by his contemporary John Locke about the nature of human perception. Both Locke and Berkeley agreed that there was an outside world, and it was this world which caused the ideas one has within one’s mind. Berkeley sought to prove that the outside world was also composed solely of ideas, suggesting that “Ideas can only resemble Ideas”. This world was given logic and regularity by some other force, which Berkeley concluded was God.
Part ...