We never sufficiently consider that a language is properly only symbolical, only figurative, and expresses objects never immediately, but only in reflection; yet how difficult it is not to put the sign in place of the thing, always to keep the thing as it is ( das Wesen ) before one's mind, and not annihilated by the expression ( das Wort ).
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

And you mustn’t suppose that I didn’t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I had the right to gain power—I certainly hadn’t the right—or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn’t so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions....
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cuando se quiere arrendar a la derecha, se pasa el hico por sobre el cuerno derecho, y cuando a la izquierda, por sobre el cuerno izquierdo.
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

They revile me as lacking in passion, in feeling, in manhood.
— from Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw

the Franks have heard me, and the Alemanni;" but he soon discovered that he was now engaged with more obstinate and implacable enemies; and though he exerted the powers of oratory to persuade them to live in concord, or at least in peace, he was perfectly satisfied, before he dismissed them from his presence, that he had nothing to dread from the union of the Christians.
— 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

I thought of all the things by which a woman, past middle age, and with the education common to ladies fifty years ago, could earn or add to a living without materially losing caste; but at length I put even this last clause on one side, and wondered what in the world Miss Matty could do.
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

What? might not falsehood be the embryonic form of conviction?—At times all that is required is a change of personality: very often what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call a lie, to refuse to see something that one sees, to refuse to see it exactly as one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated before witnesses or not is beside the point.—The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional.
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Had Hawkeye been aware of the low estimation in which the skillful Uncas held his representations, he would probably have prolonged the entertainment a little in pique.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

He used to say, “He was welly stawed wi’ eating, for there were three or four houses where nowt would serve ’em but he must share in their breakfast;” and by the time he had done his last breakfast, he came to some other friend who was beginning dinner; but come what might in the way of temptation, Tom was always sober, civil, and smiling; and, as Miss Jenkyns used to say, it was a lesson in patience, that she doubted not would call out that precious quality in some p. 190 minds, where, but for Thomas, it might have lain dormant and undiscovered.
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

It is an extremely interesting Anglo-Saxon remain; and as it bears for title, "be leodgethincthum and lage," it purports to give legal information upon the secular dignities and ranks of the Anglo-Saxon period.
— from Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 97, September 6, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours—labours from which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have shrunk.
— from With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) by Rudyard Kipling

Looking at existence from this special point of view (which indeed is a difficult one to maintain for long, as we habitually look at life in planes and forget the great lines which connect and run through these), we immediately perceive it to be reasonable to suppose that as we advance beyond our present standpoint the power of growth by assimilation will become greater and probably change into a method yet more rapid, easy, and unconscious.
— from Light on the Path and Through the Gates of Gold by Mabel Collins

At length, in possession of the plateau, exhausted by the loss of strength and blood, Ney finding himself surrounded only by dead, dying, and obscurity, became fatigued; he ordered his troops to cease firing, to keep silence, and present bayonets.
— from History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 by Ségur, Philippe-Paul, comte de

The cortical region seems to be appropriated, at least in part, by psychological phenomena, of which personality is the centre, active memory, attention, judgment, abstraction, will.
— from Metapsychical Phenomena: Methods and Observations by J. (Joseph) Maxwell

But such changes were slow of growth, and long in penetrating beyond great centres; and it was a terrible thing for a brace of lads, unprotected and powerless as these twin brothers, to have brought upon themselves the hostility and perchance the jealousy of a man like the Sieur de Navailles.
— from In the Days of Chivalry: A Tale of the Times of the Black Prince by Evelyn Everett-Green

THE GOVERNOR, which can be dispensed with in most ordinary domestic acetylene lighting installations provided with a good gasholder of the rising-bell type, is designed to deliver the acetylene to a service-pipe at a uniform pressure, identical with that under which the burners develop their maximum illuminating efficiency.
— from Acetylene, the Principles of Its Generation and Use A Practical Handbook on the Production, Purification, and Subsequent Treatment of Acetylene for the Development of Light, Heat, and Power by W. J. Atkinson (William John Atkinson) Butterfield

Individuals of this species frequently have been found beneath rocks and logs in pine-oak, pine, or fir forests from elevations of 1550 to 1850 meters.
— from The Amphibians and Reptiles of Michoacán, México by William Edward Duellman

Officials swarmed in the Nile valley, and it does not seem that they were actuated by a very high standard of political morality, or, at least in practice, they fell short of it.
— from Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt by Lewis Spence

Tom had met some of his friends who attended the Seven Oaks Military Academy, among them big Bob Steele and little Isadore Phelps.
— from Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies; Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace by Alice B. Emerson

When it thunders and lightens I play I am an old Norseman and that I really believe Thor is pounding with his big hammer and that he is scaring the bad frost giants.
— from The Rainbow Bridge by Frances Margaret Fox