READ BOOK Sage Alexander And The Hall Of Nightmaresl [UPDATED]
Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: "écrasez l'infâme", or "crush the infamous".[124] The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy.[125] He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of Jean Calas and François-Jean de la Barre.[126] He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them."[127]
READ BOOK Sage Alexander And The Hall Of Nightmaresl
In 1748, after having read Henri de Boulainvilliers and George Sale,[166] he wrote again about Mohammed and Islam in "De l'Alcoran et de Mahomet" ("On the Quran and on Mohammed"). In this essay, Voltaire maintained that Mohammed was a "sublime charlatan"[f] Drawing on complementary information in Herbelot's "Oriental Library", Voltaire, according to René Pomeau, adjudged the Quran, with its "contradictions, ... absurdities, ... anachronisms", to be "rhapsody, without connection, without order, and without art".[167][168][169][170] Thus he "henceforward conceded"[170] that "if his book was bad for our times and for us, it was very good for his contemporaries, and his religion even more so. It must be admitted that he removed almost all of Asia from idolatry" and that "it was difficult for such a simple and wise religion, taught by a man who was constantly victorious, could hardly fail to subjugate a portion of the earth." He considered that "its civil laws are good; its dogma is admirable which it has in common with ours" but that "his means are shocking; deception and murder".[171]
According to Victor Hugo: "To name Voltaire is to characterize the entire eighteenth century."[229] Goethe regarded Voltaire as the greatest literary figure of modern times, and possibly of all time.[230] According to Diderot, Voltaire's influence would extend far into the future.[231][h] Napoleon commented that till he was sixteen he "would have fought for Rousseau against the friends of Voltaire, today it is the opposite ... The more I read Voltaire the more I love him. He is a man always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic"[232] (though he later criticized Voltaire's work Mahomet during his captivity on Saint Helena).[233] Frederick the Great commented on his good fortune for having lived in the age of Voltaire, and corresponded with him throughout his reign until Voltaire's death.[234] On May 12, 1760, Frederick wrote: "For my part I shall go to Hades and tell Virgil that a Frenchman has surpassed him in his own art. I shall say as much to Sophocles and Euripides; I shall speak to Thucydides of your histories, to Quintus Curtius of your Charles XII; and perhaps I shall be stoned by these jealous dead because a single man has united all their different merits in himself."[235] In England, Voltaire's views influenced Godwin, Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Byron and Shelley.[230] Macaulay made note of the fear that Voltaire's very name incited in tyrants and fanatics.[236][i]
Even less known is author Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov, venerated sage of Kazakh and Russian literature, though his books have been published in translation worldwide. Nurpeisov exposes Kazakh life to Western readers as Tolstoy did with Russians, and Marquez, Colombians.
Return to the Dark House by Laurie Faria Stolarz is a suspenseful horror book that I was unable to put down. Quickly, the reader becomes filled with intensity and will keep asking for more. At the end of each chapter, there is a striking cliffhanger to keep the reader guessing. This is the second book in the series so I would definitely recommend reading the first one(Welcome to the Dark House ), because the plot will be more understandable. I would recommend this book for horror-seeking readers or those who enjoy heart pounding suspense. In addition, this book is intriguing from the very first page and the intensity picks up right away. This book is the thriller of a lifetime with a wonderful ending that will not leave you disappointed.
EVERY preface is, I imagine, written after the book has been completed and now that I have finished this volume I will state several difficulties which may put the reader upon his guard unless he too postpones the preface to the very last. Many times during the writing of these reminiscences, I have become convinced that the task was undertaken all too soon. One's fiftieth year is indeed an impressive milestone at which one may well pause to take an accounting, but the people with whom I have so long journeyed have become so intimate a part of my lot that they cannot be written of either in praise or blame; the public movements and causes with which I am still identified have become so endeared, some of them through their very struggles and failures, that it is difficult to discuss them. It has also been hard to determine what incidents and experiences should be selected for recital, and I have found that I might give an accurate report of each isolated event and yet give a totally misleading impression of the whole, solely by the selection of the incidents. For these reasons and many others I have found it difficult to make a faithful record of the years since the autumn of 1889 when without any preconceived social theories or economic views, I came to live in an industrial district of Chicago. If the reader should inquire why the book was ever undertaken in the face of so many difficulties, in reply I could instance two purposes, only one of which in the language of organized charity, is "worthy." Because Settlements have multiplied so easily in the United States I hoped that a simple statement of an earlier effort, including the stress and storm, might be of value in their interpretation and possibly clear them of a certain charge of superficiality. The unworthy motive was a desire to start a "backfire," as it were, to extinquish two biographies of myself, one of which had been submitted to me in outline, that made life in a Settlement all too smooth and charming.The earlier chapters present influences and personal motives with a detail which will be quite unpardonable if they fail to make clear the personality upon whom various social and industrial movements in Chicago reacted during a period of twenty years. No effort is made in the recital to separate my own history from that of Hull-House during the years in which I was "launched deep into the stormy intercourse of human life" for, so far as a mind is pliant under the pressure of events and experiences, it becomes hard to detach it. It has unfortunately been necessary to abandon the chronological order in favor of the topical, for during the early years at Hull-House, time seemed to afford a mere framework for certain lines of activity and I have found in writing this book, that after these activities have been recorded, I can scarcely recall the scaffolding. More than a third of the material in the book has appeared in The American Magazine, one chapter of it in McClure's Magazine, and earlier statements of the Settlement motive, published years ago, have been utilized in chronological order because it seemed impossible to reproduce their enthusiasm. It is a matter of gratification to me that the book is illustrated from drawings made by Miss Norah Hamilton of Hull-House, and the cover designed by another resident, Mr. Frank Hazenplug. I am indebted for the making of the index and for many other services to Miss Clara Landsberg, also of Hull-House. If the conclusions of the whole matter are similar to those I have already published at intervals during the twenty years at Hull-House, I can only make the defense that each of the earlier books was an attempt to set forth a thesis supported by experience, whereas this volume endeavors to trace the experiences through which various conclusions were forced upon me.
At the long dinner table laid in the garden were the various travelingguests, the grown-up daughters, and the younger children with theirgoverness. The countess presided over the usual European dinner served bymen, but the count and the daughter, who had worked all day in the fields,ate only porridge and black bread and drank only kvas, the fare of thehay-making peasants. Of course we are all accustomed to the fact thatthose who perform the heaviest labor eat the coarsest and simplest fare atthe end of the day, but it is not often that we sit at the same table withthem while we ourselves eat the more elaborate food prepared by someoneelse's labor. Tolstoy ate his simple supper without remark or comment uponthe food his family and guests preferred to eat, assuming that they, aswell as he, had settled the matter with their own consciences.The Tolstoy household that evening was much interested in the fate of ayoung Russian spy who had recently come to Tolstoy in the guise of acountry schoolmaster, in order to obtain a copy of "Life," which had beeninterdicted by the censor of the press. After spending the night in talkwith Tolstoy, the spy had gone away with a copy of the forbidden manuscriptbut, unfortunately for himself, having become converted to Tolstoy's viewshe had later made a full confession to the authorities and had been exiledto Siberia. Tolstoy, holding that it was most unjust to exile the disciplewhile he, the author of the book, remained at large, had pointed out thisinconsistency in an open letter to one of the Moscow newspapers. Thediscussion of this incident, of course, opened up the entire subject ofnonresidence, and curiously enough I was disappointed in Tolstoy's positionin the matter. It seemed to me that he made too great a distinctionbetween the use of physical force and that moral energy which can overrideanother's differences and scruples with equal ruthlessness.With that inner sense of mortification with which one finds one's self atdifference with the great authority, I recalled the conviction of the earlyHull-House residents; that whatever of good the Settlement had to offershould be put into positive terms, that we might live with opposition to noman, with recognition of the good in every man, even the most wretched. Wehad often departed from this principle, but had it not in every case been aconfession of weakness, and had we not always found antagonism a foolishand unwarrantable expenditure of energy?The conversation at dinner and afterward, although conducted with animationand sincerity, for the moment stirred vague misgivings within me. WasTolstoy more logical than life warrants? Could the wrongs of life bereduced to the terms of unrequited labor and all be made right if eachperson performed the amount necessary to satisfy his own wants? Was it notalways easy to put up a strong case if one took the naturalistic view oflife? But what about the historic view, the inevitable shadings andmodifications which life itself brings to its own interpretation? MissSmith and I took a night train back to Moscow in that tumult of feelingwhich is always produced by contact with a conscience making one more ofthose determined efforts to probe to the very foundations of the mysteriousworld in which we find ourselves. A horde of perplexing questions,concerning those problems of existence of which in happier moments we catchbut fleeting glimpses and at which we even then stand aghast, pursued usrelentlessly on the long journey through the great wheat plains of SouthRussia, through the crowded Ghetto of Warsaw, and finally into the smilingfields of Germany where the peasant men and women were harvesting thegrain. I remember that through the sight of those toiling peasants, I madea curious connection between the bread labor advocated by Tolstoy and thecomfort the harvest fields are said to have once brought to Luther when,much perturbed by many theological difficulties, he suddenly forgot themall in a gush of gratitude for mere bread, exclaiming, "How it stands, thatgolden yellow corn, on its fine tapered stem; the meek earth, at God's kind