If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La Rochefoucauld [70] in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims" has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in order to do whatever we please with impunity."
— from Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

And with these words Henrietta rose in majestic indignation, whilst the cardinal, raising his hands clasped toward her, exclaimed, “Ah, madame, madame, how little you know me, mon Dieu!”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

I, too, was pleased with Madame Audibert’s tact and thoughtfulness; and as making Marcoline happy was to make me happy also, I expressed my gratitude to her in very warm terms.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Insensible to any feeling of self-respect, I bore even the contempt of my sister Rosalie; both she and my mother hardly ever deigning to cast a glance at the young libertine whom they only saw at rare intervals, looking deadly pale and worn out: my ever-growing despair made me at last resort to foolhardiness as the only means of forcing hostile fate to my side.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

Secretary of War Taft, in addressing a mass meeting held in Baltimore, Saturday night, ridiculed Judge Parker’s statement and characterized his figures as alarmist.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

Pasingitun ka lang níya arun magkaáway mu, He will simply do s.t. to give you cause to quarrel with him.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

If a Christian power had been maintained in Arabia, Mahomet must have been crushed in his cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a revolution which has changed the civil and religious state of the world.
— 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

5 The morality of breeding and the morality of taming, in the means which they adopt in order to prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may lay down as a leading principle that in order to create morality a man must have the absolute will to [Pg 49] immorality.
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Having built or dug in the conventional way a man may hang before his door some trophy of battle or the chase, bearing witness to his prowess; just as people now, not thinking of making their rooms beautiful, fill them with photographs of friends or places they have known, to suggest and reburnish in their minds their interesting personal history, which even they, unstimulated, might tend to forget.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Is my catechism all correct, or has your strong ale muddled my head?”
— from The Queen of Hearts by Wilkie Collins

Another man might have turned away his face, but Ralston looked steadily into the colonel's under the full light of the street lamp.
— from Mortmain by Arthur Cheney Train

Do you hold that a man may have the gift of prophecy in this Dispensation, without being a sorcerer, and the agent of the Fiend?”
— from The Love That Prevailed by Frank Frankfort Moore

The sacrifices made to Agni pass to the gods, for Agni is a messenger from and to the gods; but, at the same time, he is more than a mere messenger, he is an immortal, for another hymn runs: ``No god indeed, no mortal is beyond the might of thee, the mighty One. . . .''
— from The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

In his dim and blinded sight, in the blur of golden light and moving mist, he saw Oldring.
— from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

“I jest couldn't wait another minute, Melissa,” he said, standing awkwardly before her, “not ef I had to be shot fur it.”
— from Rancho Del Muerto, and Other Stories of Adventure by Various Authors, from "Outing" by Charles King

Well, you have come in the hope of seeing some village Vendetta, of being introduced to some original bandit, such as Mr. Merimée has described in ‘Columba.’ ” “Well, it appears to me that I have not made such a bad choice, for if my eyes do not deceive me, your house is the only one in the village that is not fortified.”
— from The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas