Robert Louis Stevenson's Ethics for Rascals


Book Description

ETHICS FOR RASCALS spotlights the romantic adventures, provocative ethics, and playful philosophy of the prince of storytellers, Robert Louis Stevenson, quixotic wanderer and prototype for Sir James M. Barries Peter Pan. This unique introduction to RLS and his spirited mate, Fanny Osbourne -- who fell in love in the romantic environs of Paris and married under the spell of California's Big Sur-Monterey coast -- throws down the gauntlet, daring readers to turn every trial into an adventure, to do nothing that insults their own souls, and to have a little open-hearted fun along the way to El dorado. Recognizing the inner illumination of even the humblest life, Stevenson urges: "Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the excuse!"




Shepherds of Pan on the Big Sur-Monterey Coast


Book Description

SHEPHERDS OF PAN ON THE BIG SUR-MONTEREY COAST is a medley of lively, literate essays about the Nature wisdom linking some unlikely bedfellows: Robert Louis Stevenson, Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Jaime de Angulo, John Steinbeck, Eric Barker, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and others, with a pertinent postscript on William James, father of American psychology. All these luminaries came to perceive divinity in the awesome, double-dealing power of Nature, symbolized by the Greek god Pan. Many became pantheists, or nature mystics, under the spell of the alternately soft and violent landscape of Californias central coast. The book is a multicolored meditation on a deeply rooted -- and often overlooked -- human need to reconnect with Nature, wellspring of our inner joy and psychic wholeness.




Traveling Backward


Book Description

TRAVELING BACKWARD is a highly original philosophic romp beyond the youth of old age with a quixotic ‘journalist turned mom turned academic turned peasant.’ It’s a kind of light-hearted guide to the wisdom of the ages—from Socrates to existentialism and beyond—gleaned during a struggle to recover the images that fi rst touched her heart and to answer two questions: Who am I really? Where does the world come from? It’s a colorful, occasionally poignant, journey that could help you look at life through the reverent eyes of a child again. GLIMPSES OF ‘TRAVELING BACKWARD’ : “You two remind me of Peter Pan. Trouble is, I’m not sure which one of you is Peter Pan. Well, I was taken aback. But my mate took action. Muttering something negative about fairy stories, he headed for the door and disappeared down the hall. I started to follow him but changed my mind. Instead, I headed for the public library to reread Peter Pan. Had I missed something?” (Elayne Wareing Fitzpatrick) “Human life – indeed all life – is poetry. It’s we who live it, unconsciously, day by day. . . Yet in its inviolable wholeness it lives us, it composes us. . . We are works of art, but we are not the artist. . . Dare everything, need nothing.” (Lou Andreas—Salome) “I relate to [Andreas—Salome’s] passionate struggle for truth, to her ultimate reverence for all life, and to her desire to enjoy intellectual friendships with a variety of men, free of sexual overtones.” (Fitzpatrick) “I was discovering that, deep down, I didn’t really ‘take’ to popular culture, crowds, and bustling cities, regardless of my curiosity, regardless of my journalist’s delight in writing about all of it.” (Fitzpatrick) “If you can’t change the world, change worlds.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “If I were ever to choose a place away from my country, it would surely be a Greek island, outside Athens. . . In Greece, I feel completely at home. Maybe that’s because, as the poet Shelley said, ‘We’re all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece.” (Fitzpatrick) “Back straight and head held high, he would place his left arm on my right shoulder, snap his fingers and lead me in the graceful, deliberate movements of the Zorba dance, accompanied by a recording of Mozart’s 40th played on the bouzouki. This against a backdrop of tinkling goat bells and singing monks gathered in a distant church.” (Fitzpatrick) “Many of the highs and lows in my life. . . have resulted from conflict born of the struggle between my own strong loving, nesting needs and my equally strong needs for freedom to think, to adventure, to discover, to express myself.” (Fitzpatrick) “All parts of this one organic whole – this one God – are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each other, therefore parts of one organic whole.” (Robinson Jeffers) “How did matter happen that makes the stars and cool planets and living beings? And how did the space happen that contains the stars and planets?. . . Much is still very hypothetical. Much is still unknown. Much, we will never know. . . Life is struggle, pain and suffering. But it is also extraordinarily glorious creativity.” (Dr. Kai Woehler) “Like Socrates, I’ve experienced an inner voice that usually let’s me know when I’m about to go off-track, and I’ve come to believe, with Kant, in a moral law within.” (Fitzpatrick) “Nature’ – wonderful and awe-inspiring as it is – can’t participate in a verbal dialogue, can’t exchange and explore ideas with the human mind. We can relate to the animals, the birds, the insects, the fish, and the flora with our most primitive instincts and feel joy, spiritual ecstasy in so recognizing our kinship. Yet nothing in Nature can compare with the human need for a warm




Transforming Despair


Book Description

TRANSFORMING DESPAIR IS A CANDID, HEARTENING, OCCASIONALLY PLAYFUL BOOK ROOTED IN THE PRAGMATISM OF WILLIAM JAMES, FATHER OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY AND PRIME MOVER OF BILL WILSON, FOUNDER OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. TAPPING INTO WISDOM OF JAMES, THE AUTHOR SUGGESTS POSSIBILITIES FOR TRANSFORMING AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS INTO A MANUAL OF HAPPINESS ORGANICALLY, WITHOUT CHRONIC DEPENDENCE ON MEDS.




Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894


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The Ebb-Tide: A Trio And Quartette


Book Description

"The Ebb-Tide. A Trio and a Quartette" is a short novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne. The story tells about the adventures of three Tahiti beggars who managed to steal a boat full of precious cargo – champagne. With the ambition to sell the load and grow rich, the three men, being slightly drunk, start their dangerous adventure. Yet, as they get sober, they learn that the cargo on the ship is, in fact, water, and their lack of experience makes them land on the first island on the way. Yet, this is just the start of their adventures.




Virginibus Puerisque


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Lay Morals


Book Description

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such, moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommu-nicable, for it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances.




Musical Courier


Book Description

Vols. for 1957-61 include an additional (mid-January) no. called Directory issue, 1st-5th ed. The 6th ed. was published as the Dec. 1961 issue.




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