When Aqua fortis dissolves Silver and not Gold, and Aqua regia dissolves Gold and not Silver, may it not be said that Aqua fortis is subtil enough to [Pg 383] penetrate Gold as well as Silver, but wants the attractive Force to give it Entrance; and that Aqua regia is subtil enough to penetrate Silver as well as Gold, but wants the attractive Force to give it Entrance?
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

I crept into my hovel and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their “justice” becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Last year, my second year at Radcliffe, I studied English composition, the Bible as English composition, the governments of America and Europe, the Odes of Horace, and Latin comedy.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

We were both always right: I shall ever honor and hold dear the memory of this worthy man, and, notwithstanding everything that was done to detach him from me, I am as certain of his having died my friend as if I had been present in his last moments.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I crept into my hovel, and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In no other art can apprehension render itself so exhaustively and with such recuperative force.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

“Besides,” said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us.”
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte

On these same principles, and bearing in mind that when organs are reduced in size, either from disuse or through natural selection, it will generally be at that period of life when the being has to provide for its own wants, and bearing in mind how strong is the force of inheritance—the occurrence of rudimentary organs might even have been anticipated.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Ho Shih says: "Haste may be stupid, but at any rate it saves expenditure of energy and treasure; protracted operations may be very clever, but they bring calamity in their train."
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

There can be no more convincing evidence of the presence and power of the great witchcraft superstition among the primitive races than this earliest law; and it is to be especially noted that it prescribes one of the very tests of guilt—the proof by water—which was used in another form centuries later, on the continent, in England and New England, at Wurzburg and Bonn, at Rouen, in Suffolk, Essex and Devon, and at Salem and Hartford and Fairfield, when "the Devil starteth himself up in the pulpit, like a meikle black man, and calling the row (roll) everyone answered, Here!" CHAPTER II "To deny the possibility, nay actual evidence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once to flatly contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testaments." Blackstone's Commentaries (Vol. 4, ch. 4, p. 60).
— from The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) by John M. (John Metcalf) Taylor

Many universities are rich in such endowments, or stipends.
— from The Student-Life of Germany by William Howitt

As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ('the drawing-rooms and the clubs') are not absolutely base and yet one would really think so, to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural.
— from Some Private Views by James Payn

We lift our hats, to ourselves, as reflected in somebody else.
— from The Romance of a Pro-Consul Being the Personal Life and Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B. by James Milne

He was a bull-fighter of the good old times, such as the people represent a matador of bulls to be, liberal, proud, a reveller in scandalous extravagances and quick to succor the unfortunate with princely alms whenever they touched his rude sentiments.
— from The Blood of the Arena by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Yes, you are right in saying, 'Every one must fight after his own fashion, and according to his power and influence;' let me fight, too, after my fashion!"
— from Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

Mr. Lyster jumped at the bait, and replied, "I should enter at Eastham and carry the canal along the shore until I reached Runcorn, and then I would strike inland."
— from Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910 by Forwood, William Bower, Sir

396 Who usually spend longest time in 397 With thee conversing 398 Conversion Better to turn than to stray 399 Converses He who, with no one 400 Corrupts As rust, iron, so envy 401 Corporations No souls have, etc. 402 Corruption A tree dropping infections 403 Cottage
— from Life and Literature Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, and classified in alphabetical order by John Purver Richardson