Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs, chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

From thence by link, and bought two mouse traps of Thomas Pepys, the Turner, and so went and drank a cup of ale with him, and so home and wrote by post to Portsmouth to my Lord and so to bed. 20th (Lord’s day).
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Yet there are politicians in England so grossly ignorant of the German reading of the Napoleonic lessons that they expect that Nation to sacrifice the enormous advantage they have prepared by a whole century of self-sacrifice and practical patriotism by an appeal to a Court of Arbitration, and the further delays which must arise by going through the medieaeval formalities of recalling Ambassadors and exchanging ultimatums.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

Both we and they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

All its main transactions are public and ceremonial, and carried out according to definite rules.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

am I a criminal or a heathen?
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

But, on the other hand, they are capable of an admirable and indispensably necessary application to objects—as regulative ideas, directing the understanding to a certain aim, the guiding lines towards which all its laws follow, and in which they all meet in one point.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

On hearing this word, Felix came up hastily to the lady; who, when she saw him, threw up her veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

She enlarged with special appreciation on the kindness and condescension of a large brewer, a Baronet and an M. P., the Chairman of the Governors of the Charity.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

She was accustomed to raise the money, marshal the forces, then take the onerous position of secretary and let the orators come in and carry off all the glory.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

and Elizabeth, not from Jesus Christ; it was simply in its present form an amiable machine of state, not a divine organization which should command the approving consent of all were it what men who believed in salvation ought to follow.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

There are small apertures in the walls, in order to admit a current of air, and others to admit heated air during winter.
— from Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826. v. 1-2 by Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Bernhard

The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret sense and object of these sublime predictions, which have been so unworthily applied to the infant son of a consul, or a triumvir; but if a more splendid, and indeed specious interpretation of the fourth eclogue contributed to the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Virgil may deserve to be ranked among the most successful missionaries of the gospel.
— from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2 by Edward Gibbon

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— from Copyright: Its History and Its Law by R. R. (Richard Rogers) Bowker

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Awe and wonder rendered him speechless; but the angel smiling graciously upon him, gave him a crystal, of a convex form, and told him that, whenever he wished to hold converse with the beings of another sphere, he had only to gaze intently upon it, and they would appear in the crystal and unveil to him all the secrets of futurity.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 3 by Charles Mackay

One of the most beautiful studies of childhood—Rebecca's artistic, unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand out midst a circle of austere New Englanders.
— from Desert Conquest; or, Precious Waters by A. M. (Arthur Murray) Chisholm

They always called one another, “my love,” and “dear,” in private, though I’m sure no one could have been more unamiable, or looked more ready to scratch and call names.
— from A Fluttered Dovecote by George Manville Fenn

He found Pa and Ma dolled up like a couple of aristocratic Equines, much Awning over the Front Stoop, and strange Waiters hot-footing through the Hallways.
— from Ade's Fables by George Ade

And in his imaginary pictures of what might have been if "ideals" were realised, he did not for a moment conceive HIMSELF as "worshipping" the woman who was to worship HIM, or as being at HER "beck and call," or as shielding HER from trouble—oh no!
— from Innocent : her fancy and his fact by Marie Corelli