Of imperial federation he was at once the apostle and the pioneer.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit them, and it immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to be well aware what a rich flock it had discovered; it then began to play with its antennae on the abdomen first of one aphis and then of another; and each aphis, as soon as it felt the antennae, immediately lifted up its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop of sweet juice, which was eagerly devoured by the ant.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Such an activity may contain important combats—even pitched battles—but yet it is still of quite a different nature, and on that account generally different in its effects.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas of mutual undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that is, just so far as their present and apparent interest was concerned: for they were perfect strangers to foresight, and were so far from troubling themselves about the distant future, that they hardly thought of the morrow.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In the first place, he had, like the great Stagirite, an eye at once telescopic and microscopic.
— from Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 For the First Time Collected and Translated, with Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, from Contemporary Sources by Emperor of the French Napoleon I

as the portage of our canoes over this high rock would be impossible with our Strength, and the only danger in passing thro those narrows was the whorls and Swills arriseing from the Compression of the water, and which I thought (as also our principal watermen Peter Crusat) by good Stearing we could pass down Safe, accordingly I detur mined to pass through this place notwithstanding the horrid appearance of this agitated gut Swelling, boiling & whorling in every direction (which from the top of the rock did not appear as bad as when I was in it;) however we passed Safe to the astonishment of all the Inds.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

The true Gospel also has its mysteries, its hierophants, its initiation: but these are open to all alike.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

I heard nothing at all of the affair, till Mr Morley came to my bed-side in the morning, and told me he was afraid my nephew was going to fight, as he had been overheard talking very loud and vehement with Wilson at the young man’s lodgings the night before, and afterwards went and bought powder and ball at a shop in the neighbourhood.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

They are exposed to every form of decadence: they are extreme, and, on that account alone, already decadents....
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The most essential interests of the country may be well administered without obtaining any of their approbation, or mismanaged to almost any excess without attracting their notice.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

You arrive either at night, rather too late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

But she neither pricked up her ears, nor started back, nor accomplished any of the acrobatic feats which an ordinary mother of a wealthy son would have performed under similar circumstances.
— from Denry the Audacious by Arnold Bennett

To go to Australia, then, was to cut away from the old life with all its ties of love, of laughter and of tears, and to find what consolation one might in the thought that the distance from there to heaven was as short as from a Kentucky haven!
— from The Story of a Life by J. Breckenridge (John Breckenridge) Ellis

Assn.,” Nov. 1, 1862, during the absence of the active company.
— from The Old First Massachusetts Coast Artillery in War and Peace by Frederick Morse Cutler

“Is it likely I would with Sweeny’s shop shut on account of the accident that’s after happening to him?” “Don’t you give him a drop, Torrington, while you’re on the sea with him.
— from Priscilla's Spies by George A. Birmingham

The very day before John's announcement of the advent of the lady of St. Joseph to Venice, she had seen the new moon, a slim silver sickle, over her right shoulder.
— from The City of Beautiful Nonsense by E. Temple (Ernest Temple) Thurston

I pass over the later autumn—when the fields are cleared of all but the remains of vegetation, and we hear no more the songs of the crickets and the multitudinous insect life that fills the air of the August and September nights, as the full moon looks down on the fields and meadow rich in foliage—to the time when the thought of the farmer is for wood for the winter, for the preservation of the farming implements, for making all things "taut and trig" about the barn and houses to secure their warmth for the coming cold weather and snow; past the day of the New England Thanksgiving, along to Christmas time, saying only in passing that the leaders were much engaged in lecturing, as well as with other duties.
— from Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs by John Thomas Codman

He expected her approval of this attitude; and Phil murmured phrases that seemed to fill the gap he left for them.
— from Otherwise Phyllis by Meredith Nicholson

When he was admitted to the bar in 1784, he did no act which made him a citizen, the bare act of taking an oath of qualification to an office could not convert an alien to a citizen.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 1 (of 16) by United States. Congress

Tenthly , I shall conclude this ungrateful Discourse, with saying that by reason more frauds may be committed by the Apothecaries , then by any other Trade, and by supposition that gain will tempt most men to dishonest actions, especially where they may act undiscovered; I say; that this seems to be the cause why they have two Supervisors set over them more then any Company that I know of, viz.
— from A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries As well in Relation to Patients, as Physicians: And Of the only Remedy thereof by Physicians making their own Medicines. by Christopher Merret