And to this I added that, since I knew some perfections which I did not possess, I was not the only being in existence (I will here, with your permission, freely use the terms of the schools); but, on the contrary, that there was of necessity some other more perfect Being upon whom I was dependent, and from whom I had received all that I possessed; for if I had existed alone, and independently of every other being, so as to have had from myself all the perfection, however little, which I actually possessed, I should have been able, for the same reason, to have had from myself the whole remainder of perfection, of the want of which I was conscious, and thus could of myself have become infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, all-powerful, and, in fine, have possessed all the perfections which I could recognize in God.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

I tell you, if I had stood by, tamely and passively, I should have hated myself, and merited the contempt of every man in existence.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

After an interval of suspense on my part that was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

[ These mystic, and perhaps imaginary, symbols have given birth to various fables and conjectures.
— 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

To-day it has been only by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the thinking men of the South that the Negro's share of the school fund has not been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States; and that movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining strength.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

There are people in society here that have really no more money to live on than what some of us pay for servant hire.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of oneself, to turn again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as perhaps it satisfied him.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

I did all I could, and four months afterwards Gaetan simplified matters by a fraudulent bankruptcy, which obliged him to leave France: in due time and place, I shall have something more to say about him.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Anon comes my company, viz., my Lord Hinchingbroke and his lady, Sir Philip Carteret and his, lady, Godolphin and my cozen Roger, and Creed: and mighty merry; and by and by to dinner, which was very good and plentifull: (I should have said, and Mr. George Montagu), who come at a very little warning, which was exceeding kind of him.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The rough stones are piled in small heaps on the ground, which is slightly hollowed out to receive them.
— from Life and Travel in India Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads by Anna Harriette Leonowens

I protest to you that, a priori, I should have thought it impossible that any man could have made so many and such violent turns in so short a time without a dislocation of all the joints of his soul.—without incurring the danger of a 'universal anchylosis.'" "One would imagine," said Harrington, with a laugh, "that, in your estimate, his mind resembles that ingenious toy by which the union of the various colored rays of light is illustrated: the red, the yellow, the blue, the green, and so forth, are distinctly painted on the compartments of a card: but no sooner are they put into a state of rapid revolution than the whole appears white.
— from The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic by Henry Rogers

With her rude common sense, as far removed from the snobbishness of the very Parisian servants as from the crass stupidity of the very provincial girls, who only admire what they do not understand, she had a respectful contempt for their dabbling in music, their pointless chatter, and all those perfectly useless and tiresome intellectual smatterings which play so large a part in such hypocritical existences.
— from Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Romain Rolland

Reasoning a priori, I should have come to the conclusion that such a government must be a horrible tyranny.
— from Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

His deposition, taken from the above records, and printed in Sir Harris Nicolas’s elegant life of the poet, recently published, is interesting, no less from its connexion with the witness than for its curiosity in relation to our subject: “Geoffrey Chaucer, Esquire, of the age of forty and upwards, armed for twenty-seven years, produced on behalf of Sir Richard Scrope, sworn and examined.
— from The Curiosities of Heraldry by Mark Antony Lower

By reason of their cunning and prudence, most certainly. SOCRATES: Then they are prudent, I suppose? HIPPIAS:
— from Lesser Hippias by Plato (spurious and doubtful works)

But I have not yet described the bathing-place, and, perhaps, I should have done so at the commencement of the story, as it accounts for the somewhat singular name of the school.
— from St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, No. 06, April 1878 Scribner's Illustrated by Various

Have ready some boiling vinegar of the best cider kind, and pour it scalding hot into the jar, till it is three parts full.
— from Miss Leslie's Lady's New Receipt-Book, 3rd ed. A Useful Guide for Large or Small Families, Containing Directions for Cooking, Preserving, Pickling... by Eliza Leslie

Although he had chosen that out-of-the-way place to avoid disturbance, they were never denied: and he often took a pleasure in showing his models, or explaining the work on which he was engaged.
— from Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro