Walking / Henry David Thoreau

Title: Walking 

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Subjects: Essay; Lecture 

Walking is a transcendental essay in which Thoreau talks about the importance of nature to mankind, and how people cannot survive without nature, physically, mentally, and spiritually, yet we seem to be spending more and more time entrenched by society. 

The Souls of Black Folk / W. E. B. Du Bois

Title: The Souls of Black Folk 

Author: W. E. B. Du Bois 

Subjects: Classic; Non-Fiction; Essays 

Each chapter of the book begins with a pair of epigraphs: text from a poem, and Bois describes it as "some echo of haunting melody." It is a seminal work in the history of sociology. It is one of the early works in the field of sociology. Must read for sociology students and interested in the subjects.

A Modest Proposal / Jonathan Swift

Title: A Modest Proposal 

      For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public - 1729 

Author: Jonathan Swift 

Subjects: Fiction; Essay; Satire; Humor 

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex,

Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Prison Life / Oscar Wilde

The circumstance which called forth this letter is a woeful one for Christian England. Martin, the Reading warder, is found guilty of feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, of being kindly and humane. These are his offences in plain unofficial language.

This pamphlet is tendered to earnest persons as evidence that the prison system is opposed to all that is kind and helpful. Herein is shown a process that is dehumanizing, not only to the prisoners, but to every one connected with it.

Martin was dismissed. It happened in May last year. He is still out of employment and in poor circumstances. Can anyone help him?

February, 1898.

Sir,

I learn with great regret, through an extract from the columns of your paper, that the warder Martin, of Reading Prison, has been dismissed by the Prison Commissioners for having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child. I saw the three children myself on the Monday preceding my release. They had just been convicted, and were standing in a row in the central hall in their prison dress, carrying their sheets under the arms previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them. I happened to be passing along one of the galleries on my way to the reception room, where I was to have an interview with a friend.

Impressions of America / Oscar Wilde

I.

LE JARDIN.

The lily’s withered chalice falls

Around its rod of dusty gold,

And from the beech trees on the wold

The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

The gaudy leonine sunflower

Hangs black and barren on its stalk,

And down the windy garden walk

The dead leaves scatter,—hour by hour.

Miscellaneous Aphorisms / Oscar Wilde

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

Women are made to be loved, not to be understood.

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. Moren than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

Women, as someone says, love with their ears, just as men love with their eyes, if they ever love at all.

Shorter Prose Pieces / Oscar Wilde

Contents:

Phrases And Philosophies for the Use of The Young

Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook

Slaves of Fashion

Woman's Dress

More Radical Ideas upon Dress Reform

Costume

The American Invasion

Sermons in Stones at Bloomsbury

L'Envoi

Selected Prose / Oscar Wilde

Contents:

Preface by Robert Ross

How They Struck a Contemporary

The Quality of George Meredith

Life in the Fallacious Model

Life the Disciple

Life the Plagiarist

The Indispensable East

The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate

An Exposure to Naturalism

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright

London Models / Oscar Wilde

PROFESSIONAL models are a purely modern invention. To the Greeks,

for instance, they were quite unknown. Mr. Mahaffy, it is true,

tells us that Pericles used to present peacocks to the great ladies

of Athenian society in order to induce them to sit to his friend

Phidias, and we know that Polygnotus introduced into his picture of

the Trojan women the face of Elpinice, the celebrated sister of the

great Conservative leader of the day, but these GRANDES DAMES

clearly do not come under our category. As for the old masters,

they undoubtedly made constant studies from their pupils and

apprentices, and even their religious pictures are full of the

portraits of their friends and relations, but they do not seem to

have had the inestimable advantage of the existence of a class of

people whose sole profession is to pose. In fact the model, in our

sense of the word, is the direct creation of Academic Schools.

Lecture to Art Students / Oscar Wilde

IN the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you to-

night I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty

at all. For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of

beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to

isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the

contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the

soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it.

The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt

itself to the definition.

Art and the Handicraftsman / Oscar Wilde

PEOPLE often talk as if there was an opposition between what is

beautiful and what is useful. There is no opposition to beauty

except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly, and

utility will be always on the side of the beautiful thing, because

beautiful decoration is always on the side of the beautiful thing,

because beautiful decoration is always an expression of the use you

put a thing to and the value placed on it. No workman will

beautifully decorate bad work, nor can you possibly get good

handicraftsmen or workmen without having beautiful designs. You

should be quite sure of that.

House Decoration / Oscar Wilde

IN my last lecture I gave you something of the history of Art in

England. I sought to trace the influence of the French Revolution

upon its development. I said something of the song of Keats and

the school of the pre-Raphaelites. But I do not want to shelter

the movement, which I have called the English Renaissance, under

any palladium however noble, or any name however revered. The

roots of it have, indeed, to be sought for in things that have long

passed away, and not, as some suppose, in the fancy of a few young

men - although I am not altogether sure that there is anything much

better than the fancy of a few young men.

The English Renaissance of Art / Oscar Wilde

AMONG the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty

of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in

terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in

its special manifestations. So, in the lecture which I have the

honour to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any

abstract definition of beauty - any such universal formula for it

as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century -

still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is

incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poem

affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out

to you the general ideas which characterise the great English

Renaissance of Art in this century, to discover their source, as

far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as

that is possible.

The Rise of Historical Criticism / Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the

civilisation or literature of any people. It is part of that

complex working towards freedom which may be described as the

revolt against authority. It is merely one facet of that

speculative spirit of an innovation, which in the sphere of action

produces democracy and revolution, and in that of thought is the

parent of philosophy and physical science; and its importance as a

factor of progress is based not so much on the results it attains,

as on the tone of thought which it represents, and the method by

which it works.

The Truth Of Masks -a Note On Illusion / Oscar Wilde

In many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been

made on that splendour of mounting which now characterises our

Shakespearian revivals in England, it seems to have been tacitly

assumed by the critics that Shakespeare himself was more or less

indifferent to the costumes of his actors, and that, could he see

Mrs. Langtry's production of Antony and Cleopatra, he would

probably say that the play, and the play only, is the thing, and

that everything else is leather and prunella.

The Soul Of Man Under Socialism / Oscar Wilde

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of

Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us

from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the

present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost

everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Pen, Pencil, And Poison - A Study In Green / Oscar Wilde

It has constantly been made a subject of reproach against artists

and men of letters that they are lacking in wholeness and

completeness of nature. As a rule this must necessarily be so.

That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is

the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode

of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of

form nothing else seems of much importance. Yet there are many

exceptions to this rule. Rubens served as ambassador, and Goethe

as state councillor, and Milton as Latin secretary to Cromwell.

The Decay Of Lying: An Observation / Oscar Wilde

A DIALOGUE. Persons: Cyril and Vivian. Scene: the Library of a

country house in Nottinghamshire.

CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My

dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is

a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a

mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go

and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.

De Profundis / Oscar Wilde

. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by 

seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. 

With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to 

circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a 

life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable 

pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel 

at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron 

formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in 

the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate 

itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence 

is ceaseless change.

The Critic As Artist / Oscar Wilde

THE CRITIC AS ARTIST: WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF DOING NOTHING

A DIALOGUE. Part I. Persons: Gilbert and Ernest. Scene: the

library of a house in Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park.

GILBERT (at the Piano). My dear Ernest, what are you laughing at?

ERNEST (looking up). At a capital story that I have just come

across in this volume of Reminiscences that I have found on your

table.