Many persons plead a love of truth as an apology for rough manners, as if truth was never gentle and kind, but always harsh, morose, and forbidding.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Montaigne, in his Essays, speaks of certain Indians in France, that being asked how they liked the country, wondered how a few rich men could keep so many poor men in subjection, that they did not cut their throats.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Such is the history of my metamorphosis, and of the lucky stroke which, taking me from the vile profession of a fiddler, raised me to the rank of a grandee.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

English life seems to him to suffer from a lack of edifying rhetoric (which he calls moral tone); English behavior to show a want of respect for womanhood; English pronunciation to fail very vulgarly in tackling such words as world, girl, bird, etc.; English society to be plain spoken to an extent which stretches occasionally to intolerable coarseness; and English intercourse to need enlivening by games and stories and other pastimes; so he does not feel called upon to acquire these defects after taking great paths to cultivate himself in a first rate manner before venturing across the Atlantic.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

In that isle they have a custom by all the country, that when the father is dead of any man, and the son list to do great worship to his father, he sendeth to all his friends and to all his kin, and for religious men and priests, and for minstrels also, great plenty.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

“That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of hoofs—” “I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a present.”
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection.
— from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume

"He and his amiable family received me in the friendliest manner.
— from The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook by Theodore Edward Hook

His Grace of York maintains the Kaiser's Merely the dupe of bad advisers, And, simply to avoid a fuss, Reluctantly made war on us.
— from Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 by Various

We might enumerate fifty different modes practised by “good” legal voting citizens—totally regardless of the law—and exerting an influence upon the negro tenfold more direful than that which could possibly arise from the conversation of a few respectable men belonging to a friendly nation.
— from Manuel Pereira; Or, The Sovereign Rule of South Carolina by F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams

On the 6th of May, he was made a member of the committee of privileges and elections; on the 7th, of a committee “to bring in an ordinance to encourage the making of salt, saltpetre, and gunpowder;” on the 8th, of the committee on “propositions and grievances;” on the 21st, of a committee “to inquire for a proper hospital for the reception and accommodation of the sick and wounded soldiers;” on the 22d, of a committee to inquire into the truth of a complaint made by the Indians respecting encroachments on their lands; on the 23d, of a committee to bring in an ordinance for augmenting the ninth regiment, for enlisting four troops of horse, and for raising men for the defence of the frontier counties; on the 4th of June, of a committee to inquire into the causes for the depreciation of paper money in the colony, and into the rates at which goods are sold at the public store; on the 14th of June, of a committee to prepare an address to be sent by Virginia to the Shawanese Indians; on the 15th of June, of a committee to bring in amendments to the ordinance for prescribing a mode of punishment for the enemies of [Pg 193] America in this colony; and on the 22d of June, of a committee to prepare an ordinance “for enabling the present magistrates to continue the administration of justice, and for settling the general mode of proceedings in criminal and other cases.”
— from Patrick Henry by Moses Coit Tyler

I felt myself withdrawn from the affair farther and farther in sympathy, since it had now passed beyond my control; and I resented the strain of the responsibility which I had thrown off, I found, only for a moment, and must continue to suffer until the girl’s father appeared and finally relieved me.
— from An Open-Eyed Conspiracy; An Idyl of Saratoga by William Dean Howells

"Before I saw thee, I was like the May, Longing for summer that must mar its bloom, Or like the morning star that calls the day, Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; And as the eager fountain rises higher To throw itself more strongly back to earth, Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, More fondly it reverted to its birth, For what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose, The meaning that the boy foretold the man cannot disclo
— from At Home And Abroad; Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe by Margaret Fuller

[Pg 122] XV NEWS OF THE MASSACRE REACHES SPRINGFIELD AND FORT RIDGELY Morris Markham, who had followed the Okoboji settlers to the lake region, spent the winter in trapping along the lakes and in the marshes of the Upper Des Moines.
— from The Spirit Lake Massacre by Thomas Teakle

The most ancient forms recently made known by Ehrenberg are exceedingly like those which now exist: no one has ever pretended that the difference between any ancient and any modern Foraminifera is of more than generic value, nor are the oldest Foraminifera either simpler, more embryonic, or less differentiated, than the existing forms.
— from Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life by Thomas Henry Huxley

High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever recreates man.
— from A Plea for Captain John Brown Read to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts on Sunday evening, October thirtieth, eighteen fifty-nine by Henry David Thoreau