With King John dead and the threat of invasion fading, Philip Faulconbridge reflects that the danger within is always greater than the danger without.

On his way to war-torn France, William Wordsworth passed through London and was overwhelmed by the quiet of the early morning.

Seventeenth-century poet and statesman Edmund Waller reflects on the benefits of advancing years.

Vice is a fact of life, wrote Pope, and God can even bring good out of it; but vice is never a virtue and in tackling vice together we make our society stronger.

Though Arthur Clough had discovered that to be your own man was a long and toilsome path, it was not a path without hope.

Shylock is savouring revenge on Antonio for years of disgusting mistreatment, but the judge warns him to temper his demands.