Excerpt from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, Vol. 2 of 2: Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain Chap. CXXXIX. How ambassadors arrive in Tezonco from three neighbouring townships, to sue for peace, and to beg forgiveness for the murder of several Spaniards who had fallen into their hands; and how Sandoval marched to Chalco and Tlalmanalco, to assist the inhabitants there against the Mexicans 8. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at...

Designed to provide in a series of volumes, each complete in itself, the cream of our national humor, contributed by the masters of comic draughtsmanship and the leading wits of the age to "Punch," from its beginning in 1841 to the present day...

Passed along for centuries through oral tradition by the followers of Buddhism, “The Dhammapada” is a collection of sayings by Buddha which concisely presents the religion’s core philosophies....

In The Destiny of Man, Nikolai Berdyaev sketches the plan of a new ethics. This new ethics will be knowledge not only of good and evil, but also of the tragedy which is constantly present in moral experience and complicates all of man's moral judgments. It will emphasize the crucial importance of the personality and of human freedom. The new ethics will interpret moral life as a creative activity; it will be an ethics of free creativeness, an ethics that combines freedom, compassion, and creativeness....

"Pickle"--- as this digest is commonly known --- is a collection of correspondence and chronicles penned by Dexter and first self-published as an anthology in May of 1802. Dexter was a well-known eccentric of the time period. A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress is an autobiographical book published in 1802. The author, Lord Timothy Dexter, was an eccentric American businessman who got rich by making a series of horrible business decisions that, due to luck, turned out to be extremely profitable. The book has no punctuation and capitalization is seemingly random...

Chronicle of the Cid is the great realist epic, uncut in original boards. The original story of the life and deeds of this great medieval hero was composed in verse in 12th-century Spain. Cid was a historical Castilian warrior known as El Cid during the period of the Reconquista. The memory of him entered a lot of works of folklore, and his world-famous heroic epic belongs to the treasures of the world's literary heritage....

First performed in 1895, “An Ideal Husband” is Oscar Wilde’s classic and much-loved comedic drama. The play tells the story of an up-and-coming politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, who tries to hide his secret past from his judgmental wife and the blackmail scheme he is forced to participate in to keep that secret quiet. Lady Chiltern has a very particular idea of what makes the “ideal husband” which leaves her with little tolerance for Sir Robert’s all too human shortcomings and compromises. With his biting wit and brilliant powers of observation, Wilde highlights the moral ambiguity of...

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity....

If I have turned aside from Euripides for a moment and attempted a translation of the great stage masterpiece of Sophocles, my excuse must be the fascination of this play, which has thrown its spell on me as on many other translators. Yet I may plead also that as a rule every diligent student of these great works can add something to the discoveries of his predecessors, and I think I have been able to bring out a few new points in the old and much-studied Oedipus, chiefly points connected with the dramatic technique and the religious atmosphere. Mythologists tell us that Oedipus was...

The Unmissable Middle English Chivalric Romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an epic poem written in the late 14th century by an unknown author, often dubbed the “Gawain poet”. This book features the 1869 edition, with an introduction by editor Richard Morris. A celebrated literary classic of the chivalric romance genre. Excerpt ‘And wonder, dread and war have lingered in that land where loss and love in turn have held the upper hand.’ Synopsis The story describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who...

Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He initially considers the transformation to be temporary and slowly ponders the consequences of this metamorphosis. Stuck on his back and unable to get up and leave the bed, Gregor reflects on his job as a traveling salesman and cloth merchant, which he characterizes as being full of "temporary and constantly changing human relationships, which never come from the heart". He sees his employer as a despot and would quickly quit his job if he were not his family's sole breadwinner and working off his...

Buddenbrooks (German: [ˈbʊdn̩ˌbʁoːks] (listen)) is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu. It was Mann's first novel, published when he was twenty-six years old. With the publication of the second edition in 1903, Buddenbrooks became a major literary success. Its English translation by Helen...

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor...

Don Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, these exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray—he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants—Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together-and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years. With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as...

The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult....