Essay of the Month

“Our span of life is divided into parts; it consists of large circles enclosing smaller. One circle embraces and bounds the rest; it reaches from birth to the last day of existence.”

I cannot allow of our way of establishing the duration of life. I see that the wise shorten it very much in comparison of the common opinion. “What,” said the younger Cato to those who would prevent him from killing himself, “am I now of an age to be reproached that I go out of […]

“The peculiar form of an essay implies a peculiar substance; you can say in this shape what you cannot with equal fitness say in any other.”

William Hazlitt’s trail-blazing essay on staged fights in the English countryside, considered “blackguard” in its day, still speaks to the thrill of sporting events.

For every custom there is some sort of a reason. Then if it is the custom generally to ignore or not to accord recognition to the writer of the words to a musical composition on what reason is the custom founded?

“Wyatt Earp is one of the few men I personally knew in the West in the early days, whom I regarded as absolutely destitute of physical fear. I have often remarked, and I am not alone in my conclusions, that what goes for courage in a man is generally the fear of what others will think of him.”

”If it could be established, a fearlessly edited press is one of the crying necessities of the hour. Such a journal, edited in the midst of such conditions as exist in the South, can better give the facts, than out of it, or than the press dispatches will do. True, such a one might have to be on the hop, skip and jump but the seed planted even though the sower might not tarry to watch its growth, can never die. At present only one side of the atrocities against a defenceless people is given, and with all the smoothing over is a bad enough showing.”