To these addresses—all impromptu, and some would call them ephemeral—I feel to devote a memorandum.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Preliminary to the solution of the above antinomy We can in no way prove the impossibility of the production of organised natural products by the mere mechanism of nature, because we cannot see into the first inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which are contingent for us since they are only empirically known; and so we cannot arrive at the inner all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature (a principle which lies in the supersensible).
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

He speaks as a man of Wu, a state which ceased to exist as early as 473 B.C. On this I shall touch presently.
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

In the meanwhile, works of all sorts were continued, as well on Prospect Heights as at the corral, where Harding intended to build a farm.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

And as I have illustrated the early strength of the Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile, a story which comes from the North, in which even a certain racy Teutonic flavour is perceptible, so I shall illustrate that other element of its early sweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, by another story printed in the same volume of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, and of about the same date, a story which comes, characteristically, from the South, and connects itself with the literature of Provence.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

No man should be a soldier who cannot count, and indeed he is hardly to be called a man.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance, and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no Grand Hereditaries to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost naturally happy for the first time since God for his sins had made him a prince.
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

But you will not give me your advice, Miss Dashwood?" "No," answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated feelings, "on such a subject I certainly will not.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

But Wullie relieved him by saying, with a smile, "We canna a' gie presents, Donald, but we can a' gie gude wishes, and I am sure ye gie me them, neebor."
— from Honest Wullie; and Effie Patterson's Story by Lydia L. Rouse

Onward my sight their semblances pursued; So far pursued, as till the space between From its reach sever'd them: whereat the guide Celestial, marking me no more intent On upward gazing, said, "Look down and see What circuit thou hast compass'd."
— from Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Paradise by Dante Alighieri

However, none escaped, but we saw at the posterior end of the lenticular body, and under the scaly pincers, a small white cylindrical substance, the same in appearance as that we had found engaged in the vagina of the queen.
— from New observations on the natural history of bees by François Huber

We meet with the same kind of thing among the lower classes at the present day, and the cemeteries of Paris are surrounded with cafés and wine shops, where too often grief is drowned in wine.
— from Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples by Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de

"Since you and Sis were chosen directly by Jeshua, you two are the obvious leaders of our group.
— from The Alembic Plot: A Terran Empire novel by Ann Wilson

Must I not marry a gawky, tow-haired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a stepmother who could give Madame de Piedefer points on the score of bigotry—” Pamela flew in, and whispered in Lousteau’s ear: “Madame Schontz!”
— from The Muse of the Department by Honoré de Balzac

Once again she was conscious of a curious slackening of purpose, a confusion of issues which had once seemed to her so clear.
— from The Double Traitor by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

The Domus Dei is open to such as thou, and any son who comes from my good friend the Prior of St. Michael will be welcome for his sake."
— from A Clerk of Oxford, and His Adventures in the Barons' War by Evelyn Everett-Green