Read the excerpt from Act II of Hamlet.Guildenstern: Which dreams, indeed, are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.Hamlet: A dream itself is but a shadow.Rosencrantz: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Read the paragraph from Gordon’s personal narrative.1 When I first entered the room, I was really struck by what I saw. 2 It was my first day of cooking lessons, and I was on my way to fulfilling my dreams of one day becoming a chef in my own world-renowned restaurant. 3 I had spent countless hours of my childhood watching my parents, both professional chefs, prepare delicious meals. 4 From them, I had already obtained a solid foundation of cooking basics. 5 However, it was in this room that I would build upon those basics and begin my ascent as a chef in my own right.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Gertrude: O Hamlet! speak no more; Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.Hamlet: Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making loveOver the nasty sty,—Gertrude: O! speak to me no more; These words like daggers enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet!
Read the excerpt from The Canterbury Tales.But, sirs, there’s one thing I forgot to add:I’ve got relics and pardons in my bagAs good as anybody’s in England,All given to me by the Pope’s own hand.If any here should wish, out of devotion,To make an offering, and have absolution,Let them come forward now, and kneeling downHumbly receive my blessing and pardon.
compelling speechinformal stylesense of humordetailed description
Read the passage from The Iliad.When Hector heard this he was glad, and went about among the Trojan ranks holding his spear by the middle to keep them back, and they all sat down at his bidding: but the Achaeans still aimed at him with stones and arrows, till Agamemnon shouted to them saying, "Hold, Argives, shoot not, sons of the Achaeans; Hector desires to speak.”They ceased taking aim and were still, whereon Hector spoke. "Hear from my mouth,” said he, "Trojans and Achaeans, the saying of Alexandrus, through whom this quarrel has come about. He bids the Trojans and Achaeans lay their armour upon the ground, while he and Menelaus fight in the midst of you for Helen and all her wealth.
Read the passage from "Christabel."No doubt, she hath a vision sweet.What if her guardian spirit 'twere,What if she knew her mother near?But this she knows, in joys and woes,That saints will aid if men will call:For the blue sky bends over all!
moodmotifrhymerhythm
Read the passage from "Christabel."From cliff and tower, tu—whoo! tu—whoo!Tu—whoo! tu—whoo! from wood and fell!
Read the passage from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.. . . Rousseau became enamoured of solitude, and, being at the same time an optimist, he labours with uncommon eloquence to prove that man was naturally a solitary animal. Misled by his respect for the goodness of God, who certainly?—for what man of sense and feeling can doubt it!?—gave life only to communicate happiness, he considers evil as positive, and the work of man; not aware that he was exalting one attribute at the expense of another, equally necessary to divine perfection.Reared on a false hypothesis, his arguments in favour of a state of nature are plausible, but unsound. I say unsound; for to assert that a state of nature is preferable to civilization in all its possible perfection, is, in other words, to arraign supreme wisdom; and the paradoxical exclamation, that God has made all things right, and that evil has been introduced by the creature whom he formed, knowing what he formed, is as unphilosophical as impious.
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