Methodology

Every volume on this site is the unabridged words of the original author or translator — we do not summarise, paraphrase, modernise, or retell. The one editorial act is the cut. Where a passage has been trimmed internally, the gap is marked with a bracketed ellipsis so you can see it happen. Titles and the short italic lines above each passage are ours, and are set apart so they cannot be mistaken for the text.

How a passage earns its place

A passage is kept if it does at least one of six things. Every entry is labelled with which, so you can see the judgement rather than having to trust it.

  • Sex & ScandalYou would repeat it at dinner and someone would ask whether it was really in there.
  • CrueltyIt records what people have actually been willing to do, set down without flinching.
  • Strange CustomsIt resets your sense of what human beings have considered normal.
  • ComedyIt is, across the centuries, still genuinely funny.
  • Human NatureSomeone behaves in a way you recognise immediately.
  • Accidentally RightThe author reports something he does not believe or understand, and it turns out to be true.

Ranks

Each passage also carries a rank. Core passages are the reason the work is famous. Keeper passages earn their place in a full edition. Bonus passages are the first to go when a shorter selection is wanted. The word totals for each rank are printed at the top of every volume.

Citations

Passages are cited by the divisions of the edition we print from — book and section where the original carries them, act and scene for the plays, canto or chapter elsewhere — so any passage can be found in any edition and read in context. Where an old edition's divisions differ from modern numbering, our citations follow the edition named at the top of the volume.

Notes on particular sources

Some public-domain translations have quirks worth knowing. Alexander Thomson's 1796 Suetonius replaces five passages with rows of dashes; none of those passages appears here, and nothing shortened by Thomson is presented as complete. Meric Casaubon's 1634 Meditations divides the books differently than modern editions, and our citations follow his divisions.