Résultats lu par "Charles Featherstone" dans Toutes les catégories

In this Stoic epistolary essay, addressed to his father-in-law Paulinus—a prefect of the Roman grain supply—Seneca challenges the conventional lament that life is too short. He argues instead that life is long enough, but is made brief and miserable by our habits: we waste time on trivial...

The Classic of Changes (I Ching / Yìjīng / 易經) is one of the oldest and most enduring texts in the Chinese literary tradition, and one of the oldest books on record. The trigrams and method are classically attributed to the culture hero and legendary emperor Fu Xi (c. 2800 BCE), who also...

The second in an uproarious, sardonic and incisive look through English history. In this volume, we discover the actions of the Normans and King Richard, giving clear reasons why we history should hold them in nothing but contempt. It also covers the signing of the Magna Carta, the first bill of rights in England, which came about because a powerless king tried to go to war, realised that he had no-one behind him, and was bullied into signing in order to not simply be executed.

Written as a letter of a friend who’s not sure he’s on the right path De Tranquillitate Animi is one of the most intimate and practical works of Stoic philosophy. Serenus confesses to a restless indecision, a “sickness of the soul” that keeps him vacillating between public duty and...

Mankind can rule itself without the force of top-down authority, and freedom is more than just choosing how to meet the needs and demands of capital. Inequality is structural and intentional, not inevitable and necessary. It does not have to be this way. In solidarity, we are better. Think for yourself, and question authority. This is the essence of anarchism, which has a bad name and reputation because it attacks the necessity of centralised power and authority.

James Allen’s The Shining Gateway is a profound exploration of spiritual awakening, self-mastery, and the transformative power of thought. Published in 1915, this timeless work serves as both a philosophical guide and a practical manual for those seeking inner peace, wisdom, and enlightenment.

You know him as a swashbuckling, giant-nosed lover immortalised in a play... but did you know he wrote one of the earliest sci-fi novels? Long before Edmond Rostand immortalized him, the real Cyrano de Bergerac was a freethinking philosopher and soldier who turned his sharp wit from the...

This tale from 1869 is the very first vision of an artificial satellite, which accidentally also becomes the first space station. Sailors could fix their latitude easily enough by the height of the North Star above the horizon, but longitude, without a comparable fixed point in the sky, had cost...

Before AA… Before The Twelve Steps… Soul Surgery defined personal work, was the foundation of sponsorship and step work, and bridged the Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous. The practical evangelical method covers: - Confidence, gained through trust and discretion - Confession of moral...

Four centuries ago, the philosopher, statesman and father of the scientific method Francis Bacon wrote a proto sci-fi book that would help reshape the world. The vision of ‘Salomon’s House’ inspired the Royal Society (the oldest continuously existing scientific academy on earth, founded in...

You probably know the name Nathaniel Hawthorne. Often described as one of the greatest fiction writers of the 19th century, and master of the allegorical and symbolic tale, he penned The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, and was a close friend of Herman Melville, Merson, Thoreau, and...

The origin of the phrase “call a spade a spade.” Πῶς δεῖ ἱστορίαν συγγράφειν was written in the mid‑160s AD, and is the the most complete surviving ancient treatise on historiographical method. Prompted by the deluge of amateur accounts celebrating Rome’s...

Long before the term “science fiction” was coined in 1929, Edgar Allan Poe was writing tales that reached for the stars, probed the boundaries of life and death, and imagined strange future histories. Best known as the master of the macabre, Poe here turns his restless imagination to what...

Between every stimulus and every response, there is a space. Three to five seconds wide. Most people never feel it. They react before it opens, then construct an explanation afterwards for why the reaction was reasonable. The explanation is almost always wrong. You Are Not Your Reaction is about...

A thousand miles beyond the nearest outpost, deep in the far north, an isolated prospector gets an unexpected visitor: a stranger named Thomas Stevens, looking for tobacco and a place by the fire. Before the night is out, Stevens has told him why he is really there, recounting how his dog and...

When the alchemist Cornelius Agrippa begins work on a secret elixir, his young apprentice Winzy believes it can cure him of only one thing: his hopeless love for Bertha. In a moment of despair, he drinks it, certain he will wake indifferent to her at last. He does not. Instead, he wakes more...

The true teachings of Jesus, stripped of mysticism, hierarchies and rules; the philosophy of humanity's greatest teacher as "a very strict, pure, and complete metaphysical and ethical doctrine." From Tolstoy's preface: An examination of Christian teaching not according to interpretations [by...

In 100 AD, Plutarch wrote what would become the first science fiction about the civilisation on the moon, appended to a rigorous scientific analysis of current knowledge about the moon. Orbital mechanics, optics, atmospheric refraction, lunar geography, planetary and stellar composition...

“If you have lost a son, you have only ceased to hold him; you have not lost him. He is beyond all harm… Nature lends us children not as possessions, but as gifts that must be returned.” The two most personal letters that Seneca wrote were to his mother, after he had been exiled to Corsica...

"You can surpass God himself. He is beyond suffering evil; you are above it. Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach...