Yet our Life is not a Lie; yet our Hunger and Misery is not a Lie!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

This, then, is evident, That A MAN IS NOT AT LIBERTY TO WILL, OR NOT TO WILL, ANYTHING IN HIS POWER THAT HE ONCE CONSIDERS OF: liberty consisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and in that only.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Since then it is plain that, in most cases, a man is not at liberty, whether he will or no, (for, when an action in his power is proposed to his thoughts, he CANNOT forbear volition; he MUST determine one way or the other;) the next thing demanded is,—WHETHER A MAN BE AT LIBERTY TO WILL WHICH OF THE TWO HE PLEASES, MOTION OR REST?
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Three or four days afterwards I went to take leave of M. de Choiseul, who promised to instruct M. d’Afri to aid me in negotiating a loan at five per cent.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

More than twenty years had elapsed since the question had been mooted; and though the discussion had left upon Lord de Mowbray an impression from which at times he had never entirely recovered, still circumstances had occurred since the last proceedings which gave him a moral if not a legal conviction that he should be disturbed no more.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

After a moment's silence, she asked:— "May I not at least try to please your Grace?
— from The Touchstone of Fortune Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, Who Lived, Thrived, and Fell in the Doleful Reign of the So-called Merry Monarch, Charles II by Charles Major

A medium is not a Leyden-jar nor an Edison battery; materialization is not precisely a vaudeville 'stunt.'"
— from The Shadow World by Hamlin Garland

A woman forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is not a little jealous.
— from The Lake by George Moore

She had a moral if not a legal right to recover the letters in any way that she could.
— from The Lion and the Mouse; a Story of an American Life by Arthur Hornblow

All this provoked at the time in many excellent and clever men dissatisfaction and deep suspicion; they longed for a leader whose heart visibly glowed with a sacred passion; they attributed his patience, the one quality of greatness which after a while everybody might have discerned in him, not to a self-mastery which almost passed belief, but to a tepid disposition and a mediocre if not a low level of desire.
— from Abraham Lincoln by Charnwood, Godfrey Rathbone Benson, Baron