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"Our topic is the essence of truth. The question regarding the essence of truth is not concerned with whether truth is a truth of practical experience or of economic calculation, the truth of a technical consideration or of political sagacity, or, in particular, a truth of scientific research or of artistic composition, or even the truth of thoughtful reflection or of cultic belief. The question of essence disregards all this and attends to the one thing that in general distinguishes every “truth” as truth.

A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown’s execution onDecember 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860.

Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn (in English: "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense", also called "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense") is an (initially) unpublished work of Friedrich Nietzsche, written, if not published, in the year following The Birth of Tragedy; 1873.

Divided into six sections, Provocations contains a little of everything from Kierkegaard's prodigious output, including his wryly humorous attacks on what he calls the "mediocre shell" of conventional Christianity, his brilliantly pithy parables, his amazing insights on the human condition, and his incisive attempts to dig through the fluff of theological jargon and clear a way for the basics: decisiveness, obedience, passion, and recognition of the truth.

 A Defence of Poetry is an essay by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840. It contains Shelley's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

18:52 minutes (17.27 MB)

THE FLEA.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, 
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

 A popular lecture given, it is believed, in Cambridge to the society known as “The Heretics” in 1929 or 1930.

PREFATORY NOTE.

Of the following studies in Emerson's poetry, as origi nally printed, my friends Charles Eliot Norton, William Rounseville Alger, and Charles Molloy, all veteran students of their revered friend's verse, and among the best living interpreters of his thought, wrote me in very flattering terms expressive of their enjoyment in reading them and their approval of the material as accurate and of permanent value. Hence its appearance in this pamphlet form. I have availed myself of Professor Norton's judgment in correcting one or two points in which I was in error. The " Clews " are not intended to be read independently of the poems, but as gloss and commentary for one who has the poems in hand.

W. S. K. BELMONT, MASS., May i, 1903.

Barack Obama spoke in Grant Park in Chicago, IL at 12:00am ET on Wednesday, November 5, 2008.

17:21 minutes (15.89 MB)