,,,and everything you call yours

“I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me-or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed-doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and everything you call yours. Show me your father, with his kites, his race horses, his free passes for the opera: I will eat them all, swallow them alive. Where is the chair you sit in, where is your favorite comb, your toothbrush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp. You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me-I want to lick the flesh from her bones.” 

― Henry Miller, Sexus

Download AUDIOBOOKS for free / The picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Download free audiobook "The picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde here

Beauty and the Beast

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de  Villeneuve, born in Paris in 1695, is considered to be the original author of the tale known as “Beauty and the Beast.” The story was drawn from fairy tales and folklore, and was first published in 1740. The original book was 362 pages long, but it was later abridged and republished by JeanneMarie Leprince de Beaumont

Once upon a time, in a far-off country, there lived a merchant who had been so fortunate in all his undertakings that he was enormously rich. As he had six sons and six daughters, however, who were accustomed to having everything they fancied, he did not find he had a penny too much. But misfortunes befell them. One day their house caught fire and speedily burned to the ground, with all the splendid furniture, books, pictures, gold, silver, and precious goods it contained. The father suddenly lost every ship he had upon the sea, either by dint of pirates, shipwreck, or fire. Then he heard that his clerks in distant countries, whom he had trusted entirely, had proved unfaithful. And at last from great wealth he fell into the direst poverty.

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Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" 

Marquis de Sade' s Justine

Excerpt from Justine by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

They were given twenty-four hours to leave the convent; into their hands, together with their five score crowns, was thrown the responsibility to provide for themselves as they saw fit. Delighted to be her own mistress, Juliette spent a minute, perhaps two, wiping away Justine's tears, then, observing it was in vain, she fell to scolding instead of comforting her;she rebuked Justine for her sensitiveness; she told her, with a philosophic acuity far beyond her years, that in this world one must not be afflicted save by what affects one personally; that it was possible to find in oneself physical sensations of a sufficiently voluptuous piquancy to extinguish all the moral affections whose shock could be painful; that it was all the more essential so to proceed, since true wisdom consists infinitely more in doubling the sum of one's pleasures than in increasing the sum of one's pains; that, in a word, there was nothing one ought not do in order to deaden in oneself that perfidious sensibility from which none but others profit while to us it brings naught but troubles. But it is difficult to harden a gentle good heart, it resists the arguments of a toughened bad mind, and its solemn satisfactions console it for the loss of the bel-esprit's false splendors.

Juliette, employing other resources, then said to her sister, that with the age and the figure they both of them had, they could not die of hunger .She cited the example of one of their neighbors' daughters who, having escaped from her father's house, was presently very royally maintained and far happier, doubtless, than if she had remained at home with her family; one must, said Juliette, take good care to avoid believing it is marriage that renders a girl happy;that, a captive under the hymeneal laws, she has, with much ill-humor to suffer, a very slight measure of joys to expect; instead of which, were she to surrender herself to libertinage, she might always be able to protect herself against her lovers' moods, or be comforted by their number.

Jack London

Excerpt from The Call of the Wild by Jack London,

This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as if  they were his own  children, because he could not help it. And he saw  further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit  down for  a  long  talk  with  them  (“gas”  he called  it)  was  as  much his  delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck’s head roughly between  his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck’s, of shaking him back  and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck  knew  no  greater  joy  than  that  rough  embrace and  the sound of  murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart  would be shaken out  of his  body, so great was its  ecstasy. And when,  released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his  throat  vibrant  with unuttered  sound,  and  in  that  fashion  remained  without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, “God! you  can all but speak!” 

THE CALL OF

THE WILD

BY

JACK LONDON

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