Standard Ebooks

Anne Carson, the 2026 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, references many books in her work. Here are a few public domain books she mentions often. The Odyssey The Iliad Anna Karenina Middlemarch Nicomachean Ethics Start reading like Carson today at standardebooks.org/ebooks

Have a very Dalton Trumbo Weekend!

"You may say: 'For what purpose did I learn all these things?' But you need not fear that you have wasted your efforts; it was for yourself that you learned them." – Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius standardebooks.org/ebooks/senec...

"Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it." – Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself 2"

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” ― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

The 20th Jules Verne book has been added to the library. Read "Robur the Conqueror" and more today! standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules...

"When people talk about early literary vampires, Bram Stoker’s magnum opus Dracula inevitably dominates the conversation...But a surprisingly infrequent visitor to the debate is J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s lonely blood countess Carmilla." Read more at standardebooks.org/blog.

"Passion, like character, does not grow in crowded places. In great cities men are all more or less alike. It is only in solitary abodes that strong natures grow up in their own way." – Henry Seton Merriman, The Sowers standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry...

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

What's your favorite way to read an ebook? Phone? Tablet? eReader? Computer?

F. Scott is wishing you a weird little weekend.

“In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.” ― Ernst Jünger, The Storm of Steel standardebooks.org/ebooks/ernst...

Same, girl. Same. #october

"My thoughts, today, at thirty, are these: When full of joys, sorrows are as deep, and the more pain, the greater pleasure. Cut sorrows asunder from joys and I won’t be able to get along. Shall I fling them away? That will make an end of the world." – Natsume Sōseki, Kusamakura

What is a book you wanted to hate but won you over?

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter—in the eye.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre standardebooks.org/ebooks/charl...

Franz Kafka referenced many books in his work. Here are a few public domain authors and books he was known to love. Sentimental Education By Gustave Flaubert The Magic Mountain By Thomas Mann The Sorrows of Young Werther By J.W. Von Goethe Short Fiction By Nikolai Gogol

“A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.” ― Not Edgar Allan Poe While this is a great quote, this isn’t anything Edgar Allan Poe ever wrote. It is usually attributed to Montresor from "The Cask of Amontillado," but it is simply not in the text or in any of Poe’s writings.🕯️

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” – Rumi

“Cats – by day the most docile of God’s creatures, every one of them in the night enlisting under the devil’s banner – took the place by storm after the human voice had ceased.” ― W.H. Davies, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp

What's that one book your friends are tired of hearing you talk about?

"...autumn — that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling." – Jane Austen, Persuasion

“We must ourselves develop the men and women who will faithfully portray the inmost thoughts and feelings of the Negro with all the fire and romance which lie dormant in our history...” Pauline E. Hopkins, Contending Forces standardebooks.org/ebooks/pauli...

“It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.” ― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education standardebooks.org/ebooks/gusta...

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away.” – Emily Dickinson

"September 15th—This is the month of quiet days, crimson creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea under the acacias instead of the too shady beeches; of wood-fires in the library in the chilly evenings." – Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden

"Music will prove a ladder to the loftier regions of thought; indeed I have long found for myself that I cannot attain to the highest range of my intellectual power except when hearing good music." John Meade Faulkner, The Lost Stradivarius standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-...

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby standardebooks.org/ebooks/f-sco...

What is the ultimate "autumn" book?

“Examples are more powerful than precepts; hence I quote them.” ― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Art of Illustration standardebooks.org/ebooks/c-h-s...

“You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.” ― Arthur Ransome

“But devils are subservient to certain influences of the stars, because magicians observe the course of certain stars in order to evoke the devils.” ― Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum standardebooks.org/ebooks/heinr...

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.” ― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

"Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” ― Oscar Wilde

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“the house of fiction has...not one window, but a million...every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable...by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will.” – Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“To ride a bicycle properly is very like a love affair—chiefly it is a matter of faith. Believe you do it, and the thing is done; doubt, and, for the life of you, you cannot.” ― H.G. Wells,  The Wheels of Chance

Thanks to the newest members of the Patron's Circle. We were hoping to secure 40 new members by the end of today, and as of this posting, we have 53! Our stretch goal is 60. Will you help us with a #donation and support free, unrestricted digital #literature? standardebooks.org/donate#patro...

Here's Jack London holding a pig because...it's Friday. Happy weekend reading! 🐷

"All the angry and bitter feelings that I thought burnt out for ever when I lay waiting for death, are stirred up as hotly as they were long ago. The old self is here as strong as ever!” ― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Clever Woman of the Family standardebooks.org/ebooks/charl...

We want to welcome 40 new patrons by Aug 24, and we are so close! It’s our patrons who keep us on the stable financial footing needed to produce and give away beautiful #ebooks. Will you become a patron and support free and unrestricted digital #literature? standardebooks.org/donate#patro...

“Tis not unreasonable for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” ― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature standardebooks.org/ebooks/david...

With the publication of "If I Had a Father" by George MacDonald, there are officially 1,500 books in the SE library! This is a labor of love that could not happen without the generosity of our donors and patrons. Thank you for keeping these wonderful works of literature alive and readable today!

Did you know the term "robot" was coined by Czech writer, playwright, critic, and journalist Karel Čapek in his 1920 play "R.U.R.," or Rossum's Universal Robots? “Robot” is derived from the Czech word meaning “worker.” You can read the whole thing here: standardebooks.org/ebooks/karel...

“Rossum’s Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs...Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there’ll be no work left to be done." ― Karel Čapek, R.U.R.