It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it necessary to be cheerful.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

But just as they reached a proper age for their union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare subsistence.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

On the other hand when the female exceeds the male in point of size, her union with a man immediately next to her in size is called low union, and is of two kinds; while her union with a man most remote from her in size is called the lowest union, and is of one kind only.
— from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks by Vatsyayana

By varying the position of my Eye, and moving it nearer to or farther from the direct beam of the Sun's Light, the Colour of the Sun's reflected Light constantly varied upon the Speculum, as it did upon my [Pg 297] Eye, the same Colour always appearing to a Bystander upon my Eye which to me appear'd upon the Speculum.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

You totally disallow any similarity in the obligations; and may I not thence infer that your notions of the duties of the dancing state are not so strict as your partner might wish?
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

It is true the plague was still at a frightful height, and the next bill was no less than 6460, and the next to that, 5720; but still my friend's observation was just, and it did appear the people did recover faster and more in number than they used to do; and indeed, if it had not been so, what had been the condition of the city of London?
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

Well, I will tell you, although I have always from my earliest youth had an awe and love of Homer, which even now makes the words falter on my lips, for he is the great captain and teacher of the whole of that charming tragic company; but a man is not to be reverenced more than the truth, and therefore I will speak out.
— from The Republic by Plato

When Therykion tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the battle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic and Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; “that,” said he, “is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining”: telling him, “that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of honour and virtue.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The Islands, said he, that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole Face of the Ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in Number than the Sands on the Sea-shore; there are Myriads of Islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching further than thine Eye, or even thine Imagination can extend it self.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

"'And mind you make it small enough, And make it not too small; And you shall be my journeymen, As you have been this fall.'
— from Black Forest Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach

When he took me indoors, into that house which was a museum, I noticed the delicacy of his hands, and the tenderness with which he handled his treasures, touching them as if he loved them, with little, unconscious murmurs: Quel goût!
— from Figures of Several Centuries by Arthur Symons

appear more inclined now than then to bring about that happy state of things!
— from James Braithwaite, the Supercargo: The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat by William Henry Giles Kingston

In 1757, the fall of fort William Henry and the sad reverses of the English army, made it necessary that the colonists should raise an efficient force for self-protection.
— from A Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington and Patrick Henry With an appendix, containing the Constitution of the United States, and other documents by L. Carroll (Levi Carroll) Judson

Taking a prophetic view of the future, he demonstrated the impossibility of subjugating America, and urged, with all the powers of his vast mind, the immediate removal of the troops from Boston, as a measure indispensably necessary, to open the way for an adjustment of the existing differences with the colonies.
— from The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States by John Marshall

It must not be supposed from what has been said that because a mother is not to rely upon the reason and forecast of the child in respect to future advantages to accrue from efforts or sacrifices as motives of present action, that she is not to employ the influence of these motives at all.
— from Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young Or, the Principles on Which a Firm Parental Authority May Be Established and Maintained, Without Violence or Anger, and the Right Development of the Moral and Mental Capacities Be Promoted by Methods in Harmony with the Structure and the Characteristics of the Juvenile Mind by Jacob Abbott

"At least," he said, "such a matter is not to interrupt our friendship, Madame."
— from The Second Class Passenger: Fifteen Stories by Perceval Gibbon

As yet, he loses in harmony of being what he gains in height and extension; the civilized man is a larger mind, but a more imperfect nature than the savage.
— from Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 by Margaret Fuller

Had they not been restrained by motives of a more interested nature, they would probably have answered Galerius in the words of Caesar's veterans: "If our general wishes to lead us to the banks of the Tyber, we are prepared to trace out his camp.
— from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 1 by Edward Gibbon