Book excerpt: Excerpt from Twelve Great Passions An apology, an explanation - both are owing by way of preface. They may seem to be a strange, heterogeneous collection of romances, the stories which compose this book, compiled in an utterly haphazard manner. At any rate I hope so, for I have deliberately chosen my subjects with this aim in view, making them representative of as many minds, as many ages, and as many nationalities as possible. And this I have done not merely further to corroborate the threadbare truth that human passion is the one thing which is the same the world over, and which never changes; not merely to show again, as often has been shown, how very small and very human are the greatest of us, but also to explain how really and supremely important a factor in the lives of all men is the accident of their affections. I may be accused, and, if so, shall rightly be accused, of placing the love influence in these stories wholly out of perspective to surrounding influences. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.