Classic Essays

Classic Essays for College Students is an initiative to help students get acquainted with a few paradigms of academic papers written by other students that can give them some basic thinking tactics on how they can let their minds play with college subjects. Don't be intimidated by perfectionist attitudes! They constantly make it difficult for us to spread our ideas; being by nature creatures that have trouble dealing with fear, there is one thing that perfectionists always worry about in their state of mind: We are afraid of making mistakes.

“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)

While millions face hunger, malnutrition, and starvation, the world's population is increasing by over 225,000 people per day, 80 million per year. In many countries, supplies of food and water are inadequate to support the population, so the world falls deeper and deeper into what economists call the "Malthusian trap". Here, Malthus examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources, and argues that poverty, disease, and starvation are necessary to keep societies from moving beyond their means of subsistence.

In this definitive collection of essays, including the poignant title essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson expounds on the importance of trusting your soul, as well as divine providence, to carve out a life. A firm believer in nonconformity, Emerson celebrates the individual and stresses the value of listening to the inner voice unique to each of us—even when it defies society's expectations.

Legendary author and essayist E. B. White writes, "The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest." Covering a large number of subjects, this classic collection features 31 of White's most memorable essays.

Here, in this unusual collection, are some of the greatest essays in Western literature. Witty, informative and imaginative, the topics vary from starvation in Ireland, fine China, the extension of railways in the Lake District, and the tombs in Westminster Abbey. A little like after-dinner monologues, they are passing thoughts expressed as journalism. Neville Jason reads with urbane clarity.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

American writer Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain has given us some literary gems with Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and his travel adventures in 19th-century Europe and to Australia and New Zealand. In How to Tell a Story and Other Essays, Twain discusses the telling of stories, rather than providing more stories.

First published more than seventy-five years ago in the inaugural issue of Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, Albert Einstein's "Why Socialism?" is an unheralded classic. Written during the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the United States, it constituted an act of defiance, making a case for socialism unrivaled in its time or ours. Yet, its very existence has been an embarrassment to an establishment which has continually sought to downplay the significance of his iconoclastic essay, together with Einstein's socialism itself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leader in the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He is best known for his political philosophy and ideological thoughts on the moral worth of the individual and his work greatly influenced many of the great thinkers of his time, including Henry David Thoreau.

In 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson, formerly a Unitarian minister, began a new career as a public lecturer. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy. This collection contains 11 of his most celebrated and memorable essays....

Biographer Michael Shelden called Orwell’s Politics and the English Language “his most important essay on style”. First published in 1946, the essay exploded the language trends of the time and served as an inflection point in the debate about communication in the 20th century. This collection of essays published 1946-48 provides a comprehensive critique of the status of politics and speech in the mid-century.

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism. His pieces take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mount Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of Seattle; from a...

Featured here is a collection of occult essays from notable spiritual author Charles Webster Leadbeater on a range of esoteric and theosophical topics.

Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series from one of the most influential philosophers in American history. Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps America’s most famous philosopher, did not wish to be referred to as a transcendentalist, he is nevertheless considered the founder of this major movement of nineteenth-century American thought. Emerson was influenced by a liberal religious training; theological study; personal contact with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous sense of individualism and self-reliance.

One of the most remarkable figures of the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne was a brilliant French philosopher and statesman whose work directly influenced René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Isaac Asimov and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a humanist and a sceptic, with an insatiable and wide-ranging curiosity. In 1571, on his 38th birthday, he withdrew from public life and retired to the library in his castle tower, where he assembled a body of work that is still highly relevant today.

This Yuletide collection of stories, poems, and essays has been rescued from obscurity by the editor, who has also edited and annotated them to make these wonderful classics more easily accessible to modern listeners. While some of these authors may be unknown to you, their works have been included in this collection because of their capacity to instantly intrigue and delight. Give them a try, and don't be surprised if a few of them make their way onto your list of all-time personal Christmas favorites!

Florence Farr was an actress, writer, and first-wave feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as an active member of the British occult community who regularly worked with her male counterparts in the fields of esoterica, being an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Collected here are seven of her magical essays: "Magic of a Symbol", "On the Play of the Image-Maker", "The Tetrad or Structure of the Mind", "Egyptian Use of Symbols", "The Philosophy Called Vedanta", "On the Kabbalah", and "The Rosicrucians and the Alchemists".

Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In “The Writer in the Family,” a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced...

Nous ne nous sommes jamais écoutés parce que nous continuons à les laisser nous guider à tort. Comment cela a-t-il pu arriver? Le fait est que nous avons des millions d'intellects. Mais les civilisations s'efforcent toujours de trouver de nouvelles idées. Nous devrions essayer de trouver de bonnes choses les uns dans les autres. Notre trésor est ce que nous pouvons produire pour nous entraider. Notre trésor est aussi la connaissance que nous avons, que nous pensons avoir et que les autres ne peuvent pas voir à moins que nous mettions notre sagesse à l'épreuve.