From the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by balustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small irregular lake with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

Plato may have been right in denying that there was any ultimate difference in the sexes of man other than that which exists in animals, because all other differences may be conceived to disappear in other states of society, or under different circumstances of life and training.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The nineteenth century, which has witnessed an unprecedented development of industrial civilization, with its attendant arts and sciences, has also witnessed an unprecedented diminution in the strength of the primeval spirit of militancy.
— from The Destiny of Man, Viewed in the Light of His Origin by John Fiske

It flowed at a rate of about a mile a day, and ultimately divided into two streams.
— from Etna: A History of the Mountain and of its Eruptions by G. F. (George Farrer) Rodwell

Miss Eleanor had a dread of gunpowder, and Mr. Blake sent Jack Vance to tell Noaks to carry the box as usual down into the shed.
— from The Triple Alliance, Its Trials and Triumphs by Harold Avery

One of the ideas of the young woman, deeply religious though she was, was an utter disbelief in this same thing—that is, a disbelief that God sometimes makes an exception, and, instead of working through the laws of the Nature which He has instituted, produces a direct result having the quality of what we are accustomed to call a miracle.
— from The Cassowary; What Chanced in the Cleft Mountains by Stanley Waterloo

And I thought, quoting Hafiz, that after a thousand years my bones would be filled with gladness, and, uprising, dance in the sepulchre.
— from Birds in London by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

And yet the inscrutable mystery is that this virago meekly permits the lazy cowbird to deposit an egg in its nest, and will patiently sit upon it, though it is as large as three of her own tiny eggs; and when the little interloper comes out from his shell the mother-bird will continue to give it the most devoted care long after it has shoved her poor little starved babies out of the nest to meet an untimely death in the smilax thicket below.
— from Bird Neighbors An Introductory Acquaintance with One Hundred and Fifty Birds Commonly Found in the Gardens, Meadows, and Woods About Our Homes by Neltje Blanchan

There is an underlying depth in the story which reminds one, in a lesser degree, of the profundity of George Eliot, and "This Man's Dominion" is by no means a novel to be thrust aside as exhausted at one perusal.'— Dundee Advertiser.
— from Battles of English History by H. B. (Hereford Brooke) George

In his persistent dislike for Canning, Castlereagh and Mr. Frere, as well as for the Spaniards, he concludes that the business ‘indicated an unsettled policy, shallow combination, and had agents on the part of the British Cabinet, and an unwise and unworthy disposition in the Supreme Junta,’ while Smith was ‘zealous and acute’ and Cradock ‘full of zeal and moral courage.’
— from A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809 From the Battle of Corunna to the End of the Talavera Campaign by Charles Oman

ABERCARN, an urban district in the southern parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, 10 m. N.W. of Newport by the Great Western railway.
— from The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

At an uncertain date in the summer she went to Bath, leaving her husband in London or its neighbourhood.
— from Shelley by John Addington Symonds