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This book is a collection of the writings of Swami Vivekananda on the theory and practice of meditation. It is more of an introductory book with plenty of inspiration passages to motivate a reader to adopt meditation for a better and peaceful life.

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy

The Quedak lay on a small hilltop and watched a slender jet of light descend through the sky. The feather-tailed jet was golden, and brighter than the sun. Poised above it was a glistening metallic object, fabricated rather than natural, hauntingly familiar. The Quedak tried to think what it was.

He couldn’t remember. His memories had atrophied with his functions, leaving only scattered fragments of images. He searched among them now, leafing through his brief scraps of ruined cities, dying populations, a blue-water-filled canal, two moons, a spaceship….

That was it. The descending object was a spaceship. There had been many of them during the great days of the Quedak.

It is well known that the province of New-York, anciently called Manahattos by the Indians, was originally settled by a Dutch colony, which came from Holland, I think, in the time of Charles the Second. Finding the country to their liking, they were followed by others more wealthy and better informed. Some of the early emigrants also appear to have been people respectable both from their family and character. Of these the principal were the Cuylers, the Schuylers, the Rensselaers, the Delanceys, the Cortlandts, the Tenbroeks, and the Beekmans, who have all of them been since distinguished in the late civil wars, either as persecuted loyalists or triumphant patriots. I do not precisely recollect the motives assigned for the voluntary exile of persons who were evidently in circumstances that might admit of their living in comfort at home, but am apt to think that the early settlers were those who adhered to the interest of the Stadtholder’s family, a party which, during the minority of King William, was almost persecuted by the high republicans. Those who came over at a later period probably belong to the party which opposed the Stadtholder, and which was then in its turn depressed. These persons afterwards distinguished themselves by an aversion, almost amounting to antipathy, to the British army, and indeed to all the British colonists. Their notions were mean and contracted; their manners blunt and austere; and their habits sordid and parsimonious. As the settlement began to extend they retired, and formed new establishments, afterwards called Fishkill, Esopus, &c.

Several literary men of eminence have from time to time suggested to me that I ought to write my memoirs, but I have long held the opinion that such works have scarcely a legitimate interest for one’s contemporaries. Now, however, that I have exceeded, by fourteen years, the age of man, I begin to regard the opinion of others, and to look upon myself as a sort of incipient posterity, and am disposed to make the experiment of placing some portion of my life on record.

“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft.” -Preface

Memoirs of My Life and Writings is an account of the historian Edward Gibbon’s life, compiled after his death by his friend Lord Sheffield from six fragmentary autobiographical works Gibbon wrote during his last years.

Best described on its title page as the “Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, his private secretary, to which are added an account of the important events of the Hundred Days, of Napoleon’s surrender to the English, and of his residence and death at St. Helena, with anecdotes and illustrative extracts from all the most authentic sources, edited by R.W. Phipps. Colonel, late Royal Artillery.”

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close – the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. Their struggle, seemingly to the death, was to leave many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but was also to lead to his immortality as a literary figure.

This volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be better to read through from the beginning, rather than dip into at random.

It would be unnatural to have such an assemblage as this meet in the Museum and Faculty Room of this University and yet have no public word spoken in honor of a name which must be silently present to the minds of all our visitors.

An in-depth series of chapters devoted to the use of our memory system; as the title suggests, how to develop our memory system, how to train it to improve it, and how to make the best use of it in our everyday lives, and to improve our positions in life. This is not intended to be a series of chapters to impress friends and colleagues, nor to play ‘tricks’ on others, rather it is for the betterment of individuals in whatever walk of life in which they may be involved by training and using their memory toward that end

This volume is the outcome of an ever-memorable tour through the country of the men of the Old Stone Age, guided by three of the distinguished archæologists of France, to whom the work is gratefully dedicated. This Palæolithic tour[A] of three weeks, accompanied as it was by a constant flow of conversation and discussion, made a very profound impression, namely, of the very early evolution of the spirit of man, of the close relation between early human environment and industry and the development of mind, of the remote antiquity of the human powers of observation, of discovery, and of invention. It appears that men with faculties and powers like our own, but in the infancy of education and tradition, were living in this region of Europe at least 25,000 years ago. Back of these intelligent races were others, also of eastern origin but in earlier stages of mental development, all pointing to the very remote ancestry of man from earlier mental and physical stages.

“Stephen Crane “arrived” with this book. There are, of course, many who never have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he was very much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, following publication of “The Red Badge of Courage,” although even before that he had occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called “The Black Riders and Other Lines.” He was highly praised, and highly abused and laughed at; but he seemed to be “made.” We have largely forgotten since. It is a way we have.” -Introduction by Robert Barr

Interest in mental disorders is no longer confined to the relatively small number of persons whose duties or family ties bring them into daily contact with the mentally ill. Disorders that so profoundly affect human conduct were certain, sooner or later, to attract the attention of those who are interested in the study of human behavior in its broadest relations or who have special responsibilities with reference to the conduct of individuals and require all the information that they can secure on factors that modify the reactions of men, women or children in the social environments in which they live and die. Uncertain of themselves until they made sure of the sciences upon which their future work was to develop, social workers since the commencement of organized social work in this country demanded of the sciences concerned with the human mind some information that might aid them in dealing with the difficult problems in human adaptation which they found constituted the chief part of social work.

ne morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.

It may be, my dear grandchildren, that at one time or another I have told you nearly all the incidents which have occurred during my adventurous life. To your father and to your mother, at least, I know that none of them are unfamiliar. Yet when I consider that time wears on, and that a grey head is apt to contain a failing memory, I am prompted to use these long winter evenings in putting it all before you from the beginning, that you may have it as one clear story in your minds, and pass it on as such to those who come after you. For now that the house of Brunswick is firmly established upon the throne and that peace prevails in the land, it will become less easy for you every year to understand how men felt when Englishmen were in arms against Englishmen, and when he who should have been the shield and the protector of his subjects had no thought but to force upon them what they most abhorred and detested.

First published in the year 1874, the present book is a biographical account of the famous English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry – Michael Faraday. It is written by J. H. Gladstone.

Micrographia’ is a historically significant book by Robert Hooke about his observations through various lenses. It is particularly notable for being the first book to illustrate insects, plants etc. as seen through microscopes. It was first published in 1665. It consists some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses, wiith observations and inquiries thereupon.

Written by famous French philosopher and satirist Voltaire, ‘Micromegas’ is a science fiction short story which has been considered to be a significant development in the history of literature. It was first published in the year 1752.

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments during 1871–2. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32. Although containing comical elements, ‘Middlemarch’ is a work of realism that refers to many historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, the beginnings of the railways, the death of King George IV, and the succession of his brother, the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV). In addition, the work incorporates contemporary medical science and examines the deeply reactionary mindset found within a settled community facing the prospect of unwelcome change.

“This book so condenses and systematizes general military instruction and the work done at Plattsburg so that it may be easily utilized in training other troops. No broad claim for originality is made except in the arrangement of all available material; the bibliography makes acknowledgment to all texts so utilized. Besides bringing helpful reminders to new officers regarding the elements of modern warfare, much of the material will be found of radical importance, as it is practically new and never before condensed. ” -Introduction

It is practically impossible to scientifically determine where the one leaves off and the other begins. These two things—mind and body; and mental states and physical conditions—seem to be as far apart as the two poles.

William Walker Atkinson was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement.

Of the contents of this little volume the section on Mind and Motion which forms, in accordance with a suggestion of the author’s, a general introduction, was delivered at Cambridge as the Rede Lecture in 1885, and was printed in the Contemporary Review for June in that year. The chapter on The World as an Eject was published, almost as it now stands, in the Contemporary Review for July, 1886. A paper on The Fallacy of Materialism, of which Mr. Romanes incorporated the more important parts in the Essay on Monism, was contributed to the Nineteenth Century for December, 1882. The rest was left in MS. and was probably written in 1889 or 1890.

“In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler’s dream. In 1856 the dream became an incorporated reality. Ten years later a rambling village with a long muddy Main Street and a thousand souls welcomed back its Civil War boys. and by 1876 it was sprawling over a large area with the cocksure air of a new midwestern town fully expecting to become a huge metropolis. If all the high hopes of those pioneer town councilors had been fulfilled, the midwest to-day would be one grand interlocking of city streets. As it is, hundreds of little towns grew to their full size of two or five or ten thousand, paused in their growth, and admitted that none of them by taking Chamber-of-Commerce thought could add one cubit to its stature.” -an excerpt

“Another party?” said Mrs. Despard.
“Oh yes!” said Lisbeth. “And, of course, a little music, and then a little supper, and a little dancing, and all that sort of thing.” And she frowned impatiently.
Mrs. Despard looked at her in some displeasure.
“You are in one of your humors, again, Lisbeth,” she said, sharply.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” answered Miss Crespigny, not a whit awed by her patroness. “People’s humors are their privileges. I would not help mine if I could. I like them because they are my own private property, and no one else can claim them.”
“I should hardly think any one would want to claim yours,” said Mrs. Despard, dryly, but at the same time regarding the girl with a sort of curiosity.

The happiness of some lives is distributed pretty evenly over the whole stretch from the cradle to the grave, while that of others comes all at once, glorifying some particular epoch and leaving the rest in shadow. During one, five, or ten blithe years, as the case may be, all the springs of life send up sweet waters; joy is in the very air we breathe; happiness seems our native element. During this period we know what is the zest of living, as compared with the mere endurance of existence, which is, perhaps, the most we have attained to before or since. With men this culminating epoch comes often in manhood, or even at maturity, especially with men of arduous and successful careers. But with women it comes most frequently perhaps in girlhood and young womanhood. Particularly is this wont to be the fact with women who do not marry, and with whom, as the years glide on, life becomes lonelier and its interests fewer.

In 1924. Rafael Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. ‘Mistress Wilding’, which is about the French Revolution, became an international bestseller. “Then drink it thus, cried the rash young fool, and splashed the contents of his cup full into the face of Mr. Wilding even as that gentleman, on his feet, was proposing to drink to the eyes of the young fool’s sister.” -an excerpt

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by American writer Herman Melville, published in 1851 during the period of the American Renaissance.

The end of the Civil War marked the end of a literary epoch. The New England group, containing (if Poe could be added) all the great names of the ante-bellum period, began to disintegrate. The poets had outsung themselves; it was a time of surrender and swansongs. Unable to respond to the new forces of political nationalism and industrial reconstruction, the Brahmins (that famous group of intellectuals who dominated literary America) withdrew into their libraries. Poets like Longfellow, Bryant, Taylor, turned their eyes away from the native scene, rhapsodized endlessly about Europe, echoed the “parlor poetry” of England, or left creative writing altogether and occupied themselves with translations. “They had been borne into an era in which they had no part,” writes Fred Lewis Pattee (A History of American Literature Since 1870), “and they contented themselves with reëchoings of the old music.” … Within a single period of six years, from 1867 to 1872, there appeared Longfellow’s Divina Commedia, C. E. Norton’s Vita Nuova, T. W. Parson’s Inferno, William Cullen Bryant’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Bayard Taylor’s Faust.