When a disciple of Kant [54] says that a man “is a free agent in so far as he acts under the guidance of reason,” the statement easily wins assent from ordinary readers; since, as Whewell says, we ordinarily “consider our Reason as being ourselves rather than our desires and affections.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

The end itself, the pleasure that we seek, is in the latter case not a good but a welfare; not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of sensation; but the use of the means thereto, that is, the action, is nevertheless called good (because rational deliberation is required for it), not however, good absolutely, but only relatively to our sensuous nature, with regard to its feelings of pleasure and displeasure; but the will whose maxim is affected thereby is not a pure will; this is directed only to that in which pure reason by itself can be practical.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

Like rabbits in their burrows, the little ragamuffins sleep with at least one eye open, and every sense alert to the approach of danger: of their enemy, the policeman, whose chief business in life is to move them on, and of the agent bent on robbing them of their cherished freedom.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, That night two shall be in a bed, one received, the other left.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

They are seen crossing over a deep craggy ravine , on a bridge of ropes twisted of fibres of trees , and so disappear in the distance at the other side ).
— from Drake; or, the Transfer of the Trident: A National Drama by William MacOubrey

A bunch of rags tied on a stick, with a can of kerosene to dip it into, makes a good flare.
— from Hints to Young Yacht Skippers by Thomas Fleming Day

It is believed, but on no very trustworthy evidence, that she ended by returning to Metz, to her husband, le Chevalier des Armoises, and that she lived quietly and respectably to a good old age, dwelling in the house over the door of which were her armorial bearings, or rather those of Jeanne the Maid, the sword, the crown and the Lilies.
— from The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 by Anatole France

When the firedamp had accumulated in the air, so as to form a detonating mixture, the explosion occurred without being fatal, and, by often renewing this operation, catastrophes were prevented.
— from The Underground City; Or, The Black Indies (Sometimes Called The Child of the Cavern) by Jules Verne

He had flopped over the first fence without a mistake; but coming on a bit of road the old horse faltered, a few yards more he was dead lame.
— from Bluebell A Novel by Huddleston, G. C., Mrs.

It was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations en masse; but catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least palæontological speculation; and it is admitted, on all hands, that the seeming breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only relative to our imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in assemblages, but one by one; and
— from Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02 by Thomas Henry Huxley

Two men were in advance of the escaping prisoner; but by an apparent misstep while he ran alongside the second, the rioter was overturned, and but one remained; the others being so far in the rear as not to count in the chase.
— from Down the Slope by James Otis

We would also beg our readers to observe that, in the case of these commissions of inquiry into the existing state of education in any given district, but especially in Wales, the commissioners had not got to look into what the existing government, or previous governments, had done, nor into how their systems acted—those governments had done nothing, and they had no system; but they rather went to see what the people, abandoned to their own resources by the state, which ought to have aided them, had been able to effect out of their own means and goodwill, and to witness the results of the voluntary and fortuitous systems which were then in full and unaided operation.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848 by Various