Short reads
Stories and lessons from the books
A moment retold, or one idea worth keeping. Each takes about a minute and leads to the book it comes from.
- Short story
The chain he made himself
On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, dragging a long chain of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks and ledgers. Scrooge asks why he is fettered. Marley answers that he wears the chain he forged in life: he made it link by link, of his own free will. Then he tells Scrooge that his own chain was just as heavy seven Christmases ago, and he has laboured on it since.
A life is built the way a chain is: one small, chosen link at a time.
From A Christmas Carol by Charles DickensRead the book
- Short story
The prisoners in the cave
Socrates asks us to picture people chained in a cave since childhood, facing a wall. Behind them burns a fire, and all they have ever seen are shadows thrown on the wall, which they take for the world. One prisoner is freed and dragged up into the sunlight. At first the light hurts and he can see nothing; slowly he sees things as they are. When he goes back down to tell the others, they think the journey has ruined his eyes.
Learning is a turning-around, and it is uncomfortable before it is clear.
From The Republic by PlatoRead the book
- Short lesson
The one thing Socrates would not give up
On trial for his life, Socrates is offered an easy way out: stop asking questions and go quietly. He refuses. Talking each day about what is good, and testing himself and others, is the best thing a person can do, he tells the jury, and a life without that examination is not worth living. He would rather be condemned for speaking as he does than live by keeping silent.
Decide what you would not trade away, before someone offers you a price.
From Apology by PlatoRead the book
- Short lesson
What you feed, grows
Dr. Jekyll makes a drug that lets him become Edward Hyde, a second self free to do what the respectable doctor will not. At first the change is his to choose. But the more often he lets Hyde out, the stronger Hyde becomes, until one morning Jekyll wakes as Hyde without having taken the drug at all. The part of himself he indulged in secret has become the part in charge.
Every time you act as someone, you make it easier to be them again.
From The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis StevensonRead the book
- Short story
How much land does a man need?
Pahom, a peasant, is sure that with enough land he would fear nothing. He hears of a people who sell it strangely: for a thousand roubles, a man may have all the ground he can walk around in a day, if he is back at his starting point by sunset. Pahom walks too far, always seeing better land ahead. He runs the last stretch, reaches the mark as the sun sets, and falls dead. His servant digs the grave: six feet, from his head to his heels.
Ask what would be enough before you set out, not after.
From What Men Live by, and Other Tales by Leo TolstoyRead the book
- Short lesson
Comfort is not the same as safety
The Time Traveller arrives in the far future and finds the Eloi: gentle, beautiful people who live in ease, with no work and no danger in sight. He first takes it for a paradise. Then he sees how little they can do or understand, and how frightened they are of the dark. A life with every difficulty removed, he concludes, has left them without strength or wit: there is no intelligence, he reflects, where there is no change and no need of change.
Keep some difficulty in your days. It is what keeps you capable.
From The Time Machine by H. G. WellsRead the book
- Short lesson
The readiness is all
For most of the play Hamlet waits for the perfect moment, and reasons himself out of acting. Near the end, his friend Horatio offers to make an excuse for him to avoid a duel he has a bad feeling about. Hamlet declines. What will come will come, he says, now or later: "the readiness is all." He has stopped trying to control the timing of things and attends to the one part that is his.
You rarely choose the moment. You can choose to be ready for it.
From Hamlet by William ShakespeareRead the book
- Short story
The letter Huck tore up
Huck has been travelling down the river with Jim, who has escaped from slavery. Everything Huck has been taught says that helping Jim is a sin, so he writes a letter to give him up, and for a moment feels washed clean. Then he remembers Jim on the raft: his kindness, his friendship. Huck holds the letter, trembling, knowing he must decide for good. He tears it up and says he will go to hell, then.
Sometimes what you were taught and what you know to be right part ways. Notice which one you follow.
From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark TwainRead the book
- Short lesson
In defence of doing nothing much
Stevenson argues that constant busyness is a sign of low vitality, not of virtue: the person who cannot be idle has usually stopped being curious. Time spent walking, talking and looking about is where much of a real education happens. And cheerfulness, he says, is no small gift to the people around us: "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy."
Leave some of the day unfilled. It is not wasted; it is where you notice things.
From An Apology for Idlers, and Other Essays by Robert Louis StevensonRead the book