Showing results by narrator "Alice Greendale" in All Categories

The French physicist, philosopher, and mathematician Blaise Pascal discovered a great secret of persuasion. Pascal saw that the surest way of changing false beliefs is by showing all sides to a question, including the side that the erring person missed. It is best when the beauty of reality reveals itself.

In this work, Pascal draws an analogy between a man who was appointed king just because he resembled a long-lost king and those who are rich and powerful. He argues that the twists and turns of life are all due to chance and unforeseen events. The wealthy and powerful ought thus to despise desire and its kingdom and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love and desire nothing but the benefits of love.

Pascal illuminates the substantial differences between the early church and the Church of today. Formerly, it was necessary to forsake the world in order to be received into the Church, while people now enter the Church at the same time as they enter the world. There was thus an essential distinction between the world and the Church, the two being considered as two opposites.

Blaise Pascal describes the way in which a soul comes to repentance. It is a process of realization, self-abasement, and the understanding of grace. From this follows gratitude and the determination to serve and worship.

Nicolas de Chamfort was a great French writer in the pessimistic tradition. He wrote comedies, political essays, literary criticism, portraits, letters, and poetry. His aphorisms are iconoclastic, colorful, and picturesque.

"A Respectable Woman", first published in Vogue in 1894, is quintessential Chopin and shows us the full extent of her skill as a short-story writer. The story centers around Mrs. Baroda, who, somewhat reluctantly, is playing the gracious host to her husband’s surprise guest, Gouvernail, an old friend of her husband’s from college. The story delves into Mrs. Baroda’s psychology as she struggles with her desires versus her self-made image and self-opinion.

The short story focuses on two lovers torn apart by the American Civil War and the locket that inexorably binds them together.

"Beyond the Bayou" is about La Folle, an African American woman and former slave, who overcomes her crippling and irrational childhood fear of passing an imaginary territorial line or going beyond the bayou.

An intense story of love, lust, and betrayal set amidst an intense storm in the American South, The Storm is the sequel to At the 'Cadian Ball by American novelist Kate Chopin. Beautifully crafted and a considered a groundbreaking work of fiction when it was published, it candidly discusses sexual passion and extramarital affairs.