"BE not afraid of greatness,'' says Shakespeare.'' Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. '' Which are you? I will tell you. You were born great; you can achieve greatness if you will; and if you go about it the right way, you will have greatness thrust upon you.

The mistake so many people make is to confuse greatness with riches. The great man can have all he wants, but he need not necessarily become rich. Carlyle was no more intended to be...

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. The dramatic date of the dialogue has been much debated and though it must take place some time during the Peloponnesian War, "there would be jarring anachronisms if any of the candidate specific dates between 432 and 404 were assigned".

The state

Papirus Oxyrhynchus, with fragment of Plato's Republic

Plato's philosophical...

The Ego and Its Own is an 1844 work by German philosopher Max Stirner. It presents a radically nominalist and individualist critique of, on the one hand, Christianity, nationalism and traditional morality, and on the other, humanism, utilitarianism, liberalism and much of the then-burgeoning socialist movement, advocating instead an amoral (although importantly not inherently immoral or antisocial) egoism.

Stirner believed that there was no objective social reality independent of the individu...

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu ("Master Sun", also spelled Sunzi), is composed of 13 chapters. Each one is devoted to an aspect of warfare and how it applies to military strategy and tactics.

For almost 1,500 years it was the lead text in an anthology that would be formalised as the Seven Military Classics by Emperor S...

The powers of living matter are still more characteristic. It is continually wasting away by a kind of internal combustion, but continually repairs the waste by the processes of growth.

Moreover, this growth is of a characteristic kind, differing absolutely from the so-called growth of lifeless things. Crystals and other lifeless bodies grow, if at all, by accretion, or the addition of new particles to the outside. Living matter grows from within by intus-susception, or taking in new particle...

ONE of the best things to be said of the stories in this volume is that, although they are not biographical, they are about real persons who actually lived and performed their parts in the great drama of the world's history. Some of these persons were more famous than others, yet all have left enduring "footprints on the sands of time" and their names will not cease to be remembered.

In each of the stories there is a basis of truth and an ethical lesson which cannot fail to have a wholesome i...

In war time it is a crime to hoard food, and fines and impris-onment have followed the exposé of such practices. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over America who are hoarding food, and that one of the most precious of all foods! They have vast amounts of this valuable commodity stored away in their own anatomy.

Now fat individuals have always been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you a...

Sir Walter Scott's "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" were his contribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, which appeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection of eighty volumes known as "Murray's Family Library." The series was planned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheap five shilling volumes, and Scott's "Letters," written and published in 1830, formed one of the earlier books in the collection.

The Society for the Diffusion of Usef...

It is indeed a question, Why should we write a book ? -We have but one encouragement without our own conceit, which is, that few, if any, of the accepted wits of the past were ever excellent in the positive feats which we have mentioned. They seem to have possessed an acknowledged. Greatness in their general health, harmony, or proportion of mind, to whose consciousness pleasant truth was congenial, and came through some subtlety of attraction.

This harmony or health of soul must comprise som...

Arithmetic means dealing logically with facts which we know (about questions of number).

“Logically”; that is to say, in accordance with the “Logos” or hidden wisdom, i.e. the laws of normal action of the human mind.

For instance, you are asked what will have to be paid for six pounds of sugar at 3d. a pound. You multiply the six by the three. That is not because of any property of sugar, or of the copper of which the pennies are made. You would have done the same if the thing bough...