The chance reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are in sympathy with his new ideal : and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of his way of life.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

“Why?” “Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such a fright!
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

“Shtchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another,” Nikitin answered sulkily.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Then the differences between what has passed, what has been later added, and what is found to-day can be easily determined by sticking to the rule of Uphues, that the recognition of the present as present is always necessary for the eventual recognition of the past.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

It always refreshed me with a semblance of antiquity (precious in a new country), though I very well knew that the oldest wool-shed in the settlement was not more than seven years old, while this was only two.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

You are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or to come?
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Each in its time and place is absolutely necessary, because a stage in the self-realizing process of the absolute mind.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

God always pardons; sense of condemnation is but another word for penitence, and penitence is already new life.
— 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.

I was a pagan; I am now a Christian, that is all— Except this: you have taught me that to love is the greatest of all joys; the joy of being loved comes later.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

Well, that is a point I am not sure of.
— from Warren Commission (11 of 26): Hearings Vol. XI (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

You must let me stay and put in a night with you at the cooperage."
— from The Dealings of Captain Sharkey, and Other Tales of Pirates by Arthur Conan Doyle

"This Cosmology which contemplates God's spirit and power in all natural phenomena is alone worthy of His all-comprehensive greatness; only when we refer all forces and all phenomena of movement, all forms and properties of matter, to God, as the Author of all things, do we attain to that human intuition of God, and veneration of God, which really befits his immeasurable greatness.
— from The Philosophy of Natural Theology An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present day by William Jackson

"Monsignore Visconte and Signor Capitano," said he, saluting us gracefully, and retiring a pace; "I am not the hardened villain the evil tongues of slanderers would make me.
— from Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp; or, A Campaign in Calabria, Volume 2 (of 3) by James Grant

Opening to its fullest extent the valve that controlled the exhaustion of air in the chamber beneath, the velocity of the car soon became terrific, and, rising still higher as I sped along, I caught sight of Zarlah's aerenoid proceeding in a northerly direction.
— from Zarlah the Martian by R. Norman (Robert Norman) Grisewood

A minister found it a place in a newspaper, to the ecstasy of the writer for the first time tasting the sweetness of publicity.
— from Lincoln, the Politician by T. Aaron Levy

We have now received a preliminary idea, although not from the study of a true parasite, of the essential principles involved in parasitism.
— from Natural Law in the Spiritual World by Henry Drummond

But an attempt fourteen years later by Captain Martin to justify a patent based on this figure of 500 acres per share failed because the promise was held to be the work of a private individual and not a commitment by the court of the company.
— from Mother Earth: Land Grants in Virginia, 1607-1699 by Walter Stitt Robinson