Showing results by narrator "Charles Featherstone" in All Categories

“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...

The late 19th Century was a time of liberation. After the collapse of empires, people of all creeds demanded their equality. We begin with two speeches that represent the old order, by Bismarck. Between the two speeches he went from being Prussia’s last Minister President to being the Germany’s first Chancellor. A statesman in the oldest mold, he argues for nationalist dominance against forces temporal and religious.

Embark on a journey through 2,400 years of history with this definitive collection of 161 of the world’s greatest speeches. Presented chronologically, this master volume spans from the golden age of Athens in 431 BCE to the dawn of a new China in 1926, now complete with seminal speeches from India’s Mohandas Gandhi and China’s Mao Tse-Tung.

Just as with the liberation fighters, socialists, and anarchists of previous volumes, these historical figures lived under great threat, attacking vast forces with little more than courage and the certainty of their beliefs. They stand as the bridge over the cultural change between the middle ages and the renaissance.

The only edition to include rare, uncollected material from James Allen’s personal periodical and contemporary sources. For over a century, the words of James Allen have guided millions toward a life of purpose, peace, and prosperity. His masterpiece, As a Man Thinketh, has rightfully taken its place as a foundational text of the self-help movement. But who was the man who lived these truths before he wrote them? And what were the original ideas that shaped his philosophy?

This complete edition spans 2,400 years (431 BCE–1944) in 40 hours, 155 speeches, and 52 speakers, including foundational addresses by Gandhi and Mao—voices that shaped modern Asia. Begin in 431 BCE with Demosthenes, whose structural genius remains the DNA of modern expression. Traverse Athens’ zenith via Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Alexander’s volatile proclamations, and Rome’s crisis in Cicero’s showdown with Cataline—featuring Caesar’s sole surviving senate address and Mark Antony’s incendiary eulogy.

Why do we write? What does it mean to be a writer? This book contains no useful tips on grammar, style, or plot. Instead, it focuses on the observation and perspective that is needed to be a good writer—on the fact that writing is an expression of the art of living. A lovely journey through a very Edwardian world.

"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...

One of the four central works in Daoism. The Lie-Tzu, or Liezi, was originally thought to have been composed in the same period as the Dao and Zhuang Zi, around the 5th century BCE. However, it is now believed to have been compiled nearly a thousand years later, around 400 CE.

The tale of King Alfred, the Christian king who in 878AD battled a Viking invasion that had conquered the rest of England and burnt some cakes. He then became the last holdout of resistance against the invaders and forced the conversion of the Danish king Guthrum to Christianity after the battle of Ethandun.

When a meteorite crashes into a farmer's well in the rural hills of Massachusetts, it brings with it something that defies every category known to science. Scientists at Miskatonic University puzzle over the rock, finding it behaves unlike any known mineral: it retains heat, it shrinks without...

What does it mean to be truly unshakeable? How do you ensure that insult and injury do not harm you? Seneca knew how to endure the unendurable. Despite being one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome, but his life was a sustained exercise in surviving forces beyond his control. He was nearly...

“The drug can make a man the exact opposite of what he is…” John Sturman has everything except the one thing that matters: the creative spark that would win the heart of Sylvia March, the woman who believes her soul can only mate with genius. But when his brother returns from India...

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...

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...

Can happiness be built, or does it only arrive by chance? Seneca takes up what he calls the question everyone rushes toward without stopping to think about: what is a happy life, and how is one actually achieved? Addressed to his elder brother Gallio, this is the Stoic legend at his most...

When and why are you justified in withdrawing from public life? In the brief but remarkably rich essay On Leisure (De Otio), the Stoic philosopher Seneca explains his choice to withdraw from public life into contemplative retirement. Born to a wealthy and literary family, Seneca was brought to...

“Absolutely unique — a book made for constant use and a companion for life" "I have never found a book that contains such a multitude of wise rules for the conduct of life.” - Arthur Schopenhauer “Europe has never produced anything more subtle in matters of moral knowledge" "Such a book...

The Huáinánzǐ (淮南子) is one of the great synthetic works of early Daoism. It weaves together cosmology, statecraft, and self-cultivation into a vision of the Dào (道) as the formless, generative source of all order. It is also known under its full title Huáinán Hóngliè...

Not all Chinese philosophers were concerned with ethics or society. The most famous figure on the other side is the Epicurus of China, The Yáng Zhū. While it forms Book 7 of the canonical Daost text Lièzǐ (列子), it is so different to the rest of that work that James Legge, the first...