Kate Chopin

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. Discuss Kate Chopin

Willa Cather

Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures … are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end. Discuss Willa Cather

Poem of the day – Aunt Jane by Robert Service

When Aunt Jane died we hunted round,And money everywhere we found.How much I do not care to say,But no death duties will we pay,And Aunt Jane will be well contentWe bilked the bloody Government. While others spent she loved to save,But couldn’t take it to her grave.While others save we love to spend;She hated us ...

Joseph Conrad

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Discuss Joseph Conrad

Frederick Douglass

To make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. Discuss Frederick Douglass

Anna Sewell

Cruelty was the devil’s own trade-mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty we might know who he belonged to … On the other hand, where we saw people who loved their neighbors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God’s mark. Discuss Anna Sewell

Poem of the day – Patience Taught By Nature by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

‘O DREARY life,’ we cry, ‘ O dreary life ! ‘And still the generations of the birdsSing through our sighing, and the flocks and herdsSerenely live while we are keeping strifeWith Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knifeAgainst which we may struggle ! Ocean girdsUnslackened the dry land, savannah-swardsUnweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and ...

Poem of the day – EXHILARATION is the Breeze by Emily Dickinson

EXHILARATION is the BreezeThat lifts us from the ground,And leaves us in another placeWhose statement is not found;Returns us not, but after timeWe soberly descend,A little newer for the termUpon enchanted ground. – EXHILARATION is the Breeze by Emily Dickinson

Poem of the day – Speak! by William Wordsworth

WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant ; ; ;Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air ; ; ;Of absence withers what was once so fair? Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant? Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant– ; ; ;Bound to thy service with unceasing ...

Henry David Thoreau

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Discuss Henry David Thoreau