This difference between uncertainty and certainty, between vacillation and decision, between the man who wavers and the man who decides things, between "I hope to" and "I can," between "I'll try" and "I will"—this little difference measures the distance between weakness and power, between mediocrity and excellence, between commonness and superiority.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Their superstitions, therefore, like those of the rest of us, must be judged as ‘a thing apart,’ not to be reconciled with intelligence and education, but co-existing with them.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in [Pg 39] common.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

640 They put into her hands an elegant box, containing all sorts of miseries and misfortunes; but Hope was placed at the bottom of it.
— from Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon

Sí, iré mi orgullo a postrar Ah, I will swallow my pride ante el buen Comendador, before the good Comendador, y o habrá de darme tu amor, and he’ll either give me you to adore o me tendrá que matar.
— from Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

The Essenes: their History and Doctrines , an essay by Christian D. Ginsburg, LL.D. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1864).
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

He and every body cries out of the office of the Ordnance, for their neglects, both at Gravesend and Upnor, and everywhere else.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

From his exalted position Passepartout observed with much curiosity the wide streets, the low, evenly ranged houses, the Anglo-Saxon Gothic churches, the great docks, the palatial wooden and brick warehouses, the numerous conveyances, omnibuses, horse-cars, and upon the side-walks, not only Americans and Europeans, but Chinese and Indians.
— from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

As heirs of this new nature and new world, with its new atmosphere, purchased and endowed by Christ, the Pauline theory further presupposes, that the natural man, having died, is buried with Christ in baptism, rises with him, and is then sealed to him by the Holy Ghost.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

And affairs also come to an end by chance, when they turn out differently from what any one expected.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

The letters of Carlyle and Emerson, as edited by Charles Eliot Norton, are among the pleasantest results of Carlyle's whole career.
— from Outlines of English and American Literature An Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Those who understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching the rural population.
— from The Life of the Fields by Richard Jefferies

No, in European civilization, among nations taught and elevated by Christianity, such evils would not be long tolerated.
— from Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe by Jaime Luciano Balmes

This may seem an exaggeration, but certainly Eliza would never quite get over it.
— from The Lake by George Moore

An Essay, by C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge.
— from Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

In the year 753, in the fifth year of King Eadbert, on the 9th of January, 1074 an eclipse of the sun came to pass; afterwards, in the same year and month, on the 24th day of January, the moon suffered an eclipse, being covered with a gloomy, black shield, in like manner as was the sun a little while before.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint