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This above all

The Advice of PoloniusGuard your thoughts and be measured in your actions.Hang on to true friends with all your might and be wary of unproven companions.Avoid quarrels and hold firm to what is...

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The magic and myth of creation

Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to...

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Dancing to the same tune

The music box began to scatter its melodies abroad. And to complete the sum of splendid attractions wherewith it presented itself to the public, there was a company of little figures, whose sphere and...

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A Matter of Great Regret

Letter to a publisher in response to the rejection of a manuscript. To John Murray, 29 July 1824My Dear Sir,Until I received your note this morning I had flattered myself that my indiscretion had been...

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A Troublesome Consequence

They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of...

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In the Beginning

THE YEARS OF WHICH I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU, when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later...

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Heavy framework rests on shaky foundation

Musings on the exterior presentment of counterfeit rightsMatthew Maule, the wizard, had been foully wronged out of his homestead, if not out of his life.As for Matthew Maule's posterity, it was...

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A Simple Algorithm

All of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons—a huge growth industry in America. The prison...

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A Novel Idea

How the diverse, contemporary and vulgar ended up becoming usefulIn the thirteenth century Saint Bonaventure, a Franciscan monk, described four ways a person could make books: copy a work whole, copy...

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A Glimpse of the Master's Genius

An idea that might vanish in the twinkling of an eye is captured on an old scrap of paperThere were curious little treasures of art and bits of antiquity strewn about. As interesting as any of these...

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I knew I had a fever

Phases of the Disease:a brick in a giddy place; a steel beam in a whirling engine; my own personThat I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that I often lost my reason, that the time...

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The Spell of the Spoken Word

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind so distinctly that no utterance could make it more so; and two minds may be...

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Literary License

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new...

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Pascal's Wager

When is a game worth the candle?Fermat and Pascal founded the essential rules that govern all games of chance. T[he rules] can be used by gamblers to define perfect playing and betting strategies....

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The Symbol of Our Labor

Hidden wisdom and mysterious revelations.The peril of our new way of life was not lest we should fail in becoming real-life farmers, but that we should probably cease to be anything else. While our...

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How a natural law is contained

—the will and convenience of societyIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual...

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Don't cut my throat, sir

Hold your noise! cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"A fearful man, all in coarse...

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Things you learn at school

—Arts and HabitsAt school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so...

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The disease was bubonic plague

No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. . . . The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the...

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On Our Vengeful Errand

— They deemed our ship, a drifting, uninhabited craft, a thing appointed to desolation. when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every...

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A Nation of Their Own

— There were quarrels over flags, disputes about authority and precedence. Grownups joined in, not so much to pacify as to render judgment and enunciate principles.. . .  And this twelve-year-old lad...

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Psychological Insights

—The burden of guiltI would have to describe a great many unamorous experiences to explain why I left Hungary again, this time for good—and so soon after offering to die for her. It seems I loved my...

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It was a cheerful, hopeful letter

— Very few letters were written in those hard times that were not touching. In this one little was said of the hardships endured . . .  . . . a reminder that hard days need not be wasted.They all drew...

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I wished to get her home at once

— Fortune favored usWhen I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving...

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The Progress of Science and Useful Arts

—What others have thought and expressed ... modified, exalted, improvedIn truth, in literature, in science and in art, there are, and can be, few, if any, things, which in an abstract sense, are...

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