On the Ruin of Britain

Gildas

Translation by J.A. Giles The Works of Gildas surnamed "Sapiens", or The Wise.

Jonathan Swift

1729 It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex,...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett INTRODUCTION.

Ambrose Bierce

THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION, 1988 A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.