He also told us 'bed-time stories' of history, and read classics to us after supper.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

But if one talks of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists that they can't just come in spots, what KIND of a reason can there ultimately be why anything should come at all?
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

They are having a regular confab together up at the Bank.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

We know nothing to be certainly good or evil, save such things as really conduce to understanding, or such as are able to hinder us from understanding.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

Yet another will tell you that the English have only become sportsmen in modern times, and that the Germans are rapidly catching them up; but this is the kind of information you receive politely, disagree with profoundly, and do not discuss because you have not all the facts at your fingers' ends.
— from Home Life in Germany by Sidgwick, Alfred, Mrs.

Sitting bolt upright, with her back to the shaded light, her charming profile with its little blunt nose and rounded chin thrown up against the dark glistening oak of an old armoire, Joan began to read.
— from Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence by Cosmo Hamilton

[504] This statement and the epithets quoted at any rate confirm the usurpation and the fact that it was accomplished by force.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6) by Max Duncker

We waited in the dark-red, solemn twilight, and later a ringing cheer told us the hill had been taken.
— from The Puppet Show of Memory by Maurice Baring

Said Sir Degore, without tarrying the word one moment: "There is a great aid and refreshment come to us out of the East country, both of victual and men, and our folk be welcoming the men and sharing the victual."
— from The Sundering Flood by William Morris

The perfect skin, with its grapelike, dusty bloom which shows where the collar droops at the front of the neck, the even lashes, from under which the deep eyes gaze out at you half timidly, the brave, honest uplifting of a rounded chin, the undulations of fine lungs, the almost imperceptible movement of restrained vigor in a poised, delicate, graceful figure, the gentleness and tenderness of a voice which at the same time suggests refinement and decision and strength, the absence of any effort to make an impression, either in manner or dress,—these are rare and beautiful attributes in an age when female children hatch out as artful women without the intervening period of girlhood.
— from The Blue Wall A Story of Strangeness and Struggle by Richard Washburn Child

Hence Newton, while wrapt in those meditations which, to superficial minds, would perhaps have appeared rather curious than useful, inasmuch as they respected distant bodies of the universe which seemed to have little connexion with the affairs of this world, was laboring night and day for the benefit of the sailor and the merchant.
— from Letters on Astronomy in which the Elements of the Science are Familiarly Explained in Connection with Biographical Sketches of the Most Eminent Astronomers by Denison Olmsted

Structure of Shell and Radii, &c. —The under side of the parietes is either quite smooth, or marked with slight, branching, depressed lines; or mamillated; or irregularly studded with large pores.
— from A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 2 of 2) The Balanidæ, (or Sessile Cirripedes); the Verrucidæ, etc., etc. by Charles Darwin

An earthquake in England, of sufficient magnitude to bury a Roman 'city,' (to use the elder Whitaker's emphatic style,) ' must ' have found some one to record it.
— from On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations. by Charles Hardwick

Bitterly chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early seventies, the United States Senatorship which he had confidently expected, young Surface, in a burst of anger and resentment, committed the unforgivable sin.
— from Queed: A Novel by Henry Sydnor Harrison