Whether, like Renan, we look upon life in a more refined way, as a romance of the spirit; or whether, like the friends of M. Zola, we pique ourselves on our 'scientific' and 'analytic' character, and prefer to be cynical, and call the world a 'roman experimental' on an infinite scale,—in either case the world appears to us potentially as what the same Carlyle once called it, a vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha and mill of death.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

SYN: Concede, apportion, allot, assign, afford, tolerate, authorize, grant, remit, recognize, acknowledge, avow, confess, admit, permit, suffer, sanction, yield.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

It is no orthodox Catholic but an occultist and Rosicrucian who thus describes the rôle of Masonry in the Revolution: Masonry has not only been profaned but it has been served as a cover and pretext for the plots of anarchy, by the occult influence of the avengers of Jacques du Molay and the continuers of the schismatic work of the Temple.
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

This was just what we wanted, viz., to fight in open ground, on any thing like equal terms, instead of being forced to run up against prepared intrenchments; but, at the same time, the enemy having Atlanta behind him, could choose the time and place of attack, and could at pleasure mass a superior force on our weakest points.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

The writer goes on to relate that the Cabalist offered to teach him certain mysteries, but explained that before entering on any "experiments of the said godly mysteries, we must first avoid all churches and places of worshipping as unclean"; he then bound his initiate by a very strong oath and proceeded to tell him that he must steal a Hebrew Bible from a Protestant and also procure "one pound of blood out of the veins of an honest Protestant."
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

You know how by the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes, states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

About mid-day, when most of our neighbours are at work, and the rest are asleep, a carriage and pair stopped before the lodging of Kailas Babu.
— from The Hungry Stones, and Other Stories by Rabindranath Tagore

N.T. Παραβολή, ῆς, ἡ, ( παραβάλλω ) a place one thing by the side of another; a comparing; a parallel case cited in illustration; a comparison, simile, similitude, Mar. 4.30.
— from A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament by William Greenfield

In the one case, the net profit to the credit of reason, acquired through long ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied usefully to the most remote ends, and the harvest, which is as large, as rich and as complete as possible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted in a single night That which stood there, ære perennius, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organisation, under difficult conditions, that has ever been achieved, and compared with which everything that preceded, and everything which followed it, is mere patchwork, gimcrackery, and dilettantism,—those holy anarchists made it their "piety," to destroy "the world"—that is to say, the imperium Romanum, until no two stones were left standing one on the other,—until even the Teutons and other clodhoppers were able to become master of it The Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and witheringly,
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Mr. Eppes defended his bill, and went into a long and statistical account of the revenue and expenditures of the nation—showed how she could easily, in time of peace, pay off every dollar she might owe—estimated the value of the land and produce and capital of the country, and proved, as he deemed satisfactorily, that the loan combined "all the advantages of safety, profit, and a command at (p. 335) will of the capital invested."
— from The Second War with England, Vol. 1 of 2 by Joel Tyler Headley

It is my duty to state facts as plainly and as coldly as possible in order that my countrymen may form their own judgment.
— from The Slave of the Lamp by Henry Seton Merriman

The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian, a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist, which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have said something reasonable, could find no better name for him than a ‘Gott trunkener mann,’ a God intoxicated man: an expression which has been quoted by every-body who has since written on the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are.
— from Theological Essays by Charles Bradlaugh

A woollen cap or bonnet, of unparalleled form and dimensions, was disposed upon his head, hiding the upper part of his face, and almost covering a pair of bushy grey eyebrows, that, in their turn, crouched over a quick and vagrant eye, little the worse for the wear of probably some sixty years.
— from Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 by John Roby

It rather makes one realise one's feebleness in being so uncertain about things that are absolutely certain and precise in themselves, if we could but see the truth.
— from At Large by Arthur Christopher Benson

ROUND-LEAVED BOG BEAN.—This is a beautiful aquatic, and claims a place in all ornamental pieces of water.
— from The Botanist's Companion, Volume II Or an Introduction to the Knowledge of Practical Botany, and the Uses of Plants. Either Growing Wild in Great Britain, or Cultivated for the Puroses of Agriculture, Medicine, Rural Oeconomy, or the Arts by William Salisbury

He made one hundred and eight feet of crocodile, which the official approved as correct, and paid not quite forty dollars for the bounty.
— from Four Young Explorers; Or, Sight-Seeing in the Tropics by Oliver Optic

The frogs, ants, and crickets are probably protected by some sort of acid which their bodies secrete, though this is only a guess of my own.
— from Riverby by John Burroughs