From the works of Francis Bacon and Daniel Defoe to those of Virginia Woolf and Martin Luther King, Jr., 100 of the greatest essays and speeches composed by British and American writers over the past four centuries.
- Henry Adams to Benjamin Franklin (below)
- Thomas Fuller to H.L. Mencken (page two)
- Alice Meynell to W.B. Yeats (page three)
Henry Adams (1838-1918)
- A Law of Acceleration
"The new American would need to think in contradictions."
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
- Defence and Happiness of Married Life
"For my own part, I was born in Wedlock, and I don't care who knows it." - False and True Humour
"It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not Humour, than what is." - Laughter
"Man is the merriest Species of the Creation."
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
- On Women's Right to Vote
"The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?"
Mary Austin (1868-1934)
- The Land of Little Rain
"Void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil."
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Of Studies
"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man."
Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)
- Going Out for a Walk
"I never go out of my way, as it were, to avoid exercise." - How Shall I Word It?
"The not perfect reader begins to crave some little outburst of wrath."
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
- Crooked Streets
"How much better are not the beauties of a town seen from Crooked Streets!"
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
- Advice to Writers
"A terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors" - Christmas Afternoon
"Done in the Manner, If Not the Spirit, of Dickens"
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
- The Art of Controversy
"I know not if there is another life, but if there is I do hope that to obtain it all will have to pass a rigid examination in logic and the art of not being a fool."
James Boswell (1740-1795)
- On War
"My mind expanded itself in reflections upon the horrid irrationality of war."
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
- Niagara Falls
"Both men and nations are hurried onwards to their ruin or ending as inevitably as this dark flood."
Charles Brooks (1878-1934)
- On the Difference Between Wit and Humor
"Is there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation?" - On a Rainy Morning
"There is so much life on wet and windy days."
Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
- On Dreams
"A good part of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived."
John Burroughs (1837-1921)
- In Mammoth Cave
"Some of these pits are simply appalling."
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
- On Knowing What Gives Us Pleasure
"A man had better stick to known and proved pleasures."
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
- A Piece of Chalk
"I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk." - The Superstition of School
"No man who worships education has got the best out of education."
Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894)
- Rural Hours
"Such open hill-sides . . . bear a kind of heaving, billowy character."
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
- Of Greatness
"Greatness . . . is a creature of the fancy."
William Cowper (1731-1800)
- On Keeping a Secret
"That no man may betray the counsel of his friend, let every man keep his own."
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
- An Experiment in Misery
"I sleep up there . . . when I've got the price."
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
- The Education of Women
"To such whose genius would lead them to it, I would deny no sort of learning."
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
- Gin-Shops
"Drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women"
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
- A Glorious Resurrection
"My long-crushed spirit rose."
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
- Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
"Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission."
George Eliot (1819-1880)
- Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft
"Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self help and independent resources in women."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883)
- Gifts
"The only gift is a portion of thyself." - Self-Reliance
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
- Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
- On Reading for Amusement
"But as for the bulk of mankind, they are clearly void of any degree of taste"
E.M. Forster (1879-1970)
- My Wood
"Pray, does my wood belong to me or doesn't it?"
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
- Advice on the Choice of a Mistress
"In all your amours you should prefer old women to young ones." - The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams
"Mankind . . . eat about twice as much as nature requires." - Imitating the Style of the Spectator
"I took some of the tales and turned them into verse." - The Whistle
"Alas!" say I, "he has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle."
Continued on page two
