Dear Natalie,

A few weeks ago, I was going to buy you a book to say thank you. I went to the shop but it was suddenly out of stock. I thought about getting something different but couldn't immediately think of what.

I had an idea of what would be good, but no such book existed. Then last Wednesday I thought, well, why not just write the book that should exist.

So that's what this is. It's actually a version of something I had mentioned: a sort of anthology of texts in their original language with some notes, both on language and on the content.

I have ChatGPT to thank for the coding. Hope you like it!
— Matt.

PS This only really works on desktops at the moment.

PPS It occurs to me I should say why I think this is worth doing. The main reason is that, it seems to me, knowing how someone speaks helps one know the person better. The particular turn of phrase someone uses is a feature kind of like gesture or type of laugh. And it seems inherently worth knowing the great thinkers of the past as well as possible. For a related reason, I think the best way to read this is kind of superficially: if you don't understand a particular thing, it doesn't really matter. It's about the experience of saying a particular sentence or word, in a language you don't know, and realizing that this word or sentence has been in possibility millions of people's heads, over thousands of years. These are kind of historical monuments, ones you can access sitting at your computer!