with sober calmness sweet, The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower, The age-worn hind, the sheep's sad broken bleat— All nature groans opprest with toil and care, And wearied craves for rest, and love, and prayer.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

For if there be any natural good, or natural evil, then it must be good to everyone, or evil to everyone; just as snow is cold to everyone.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

You enjoy with all your soul the sweet thunder of the Old Testament, forgetting the existence of Jahweh and Elohim; and you go home feeling that you have had "a glimpse of that perfection in which spirit and form dwell in immortal harmony; truth and beauty bearing a new growth on the ancient stem of time.
— 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

Behind my house, there is an old dry well, into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and never goes out, and you shall bring it up again for me."
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

Behind my house, there is an old dry well, into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and never goes out, and you shall bring it up again.’
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

She will probably become a nursery governess, or companion to some lady of superior position.
— from A True Friend: A Novel by Adeline Sergeant

When you are in a foreign country building a new government on the ruins of an old one, you naturally find out as much as you can about how the old one met its problems.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of their children and countrymen: Syria became the seat and support of the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs.
— 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

And Thou art ever a full and overflowing fountain, a fire continually burning, and never going out.
— from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas

Barring a nasty gash on his scalp he was none the worse.
— from The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

We wander on, for little care Have we turn our footsteps there, Where we are but a nameless guest, One who may claim no interest In any heart—a passing face, That comes and goes, and leaves no trace; Where service waits us, prompt but cold, A loveless service, bought and sold.
— from The Story of Justin Martyr, and Other Poems by Richard Chenevix Trench

The same to [Cidi Hamet] Ben Abdelgrim Nacasis, governor of Tetuan, in answer to his letter on behalf of Sabio Jacob Aboab, the physician, “cuyo pleito estuviera ya ajustado antes de aora sino pidiera cosas injustas”; Tangier, 30 Nov. 1666 ibid.
— from Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Spanish Language in the British Museum. Vol. 4 by Pascual de Gayangos

Mr. Clay presented the petition of Elisha Winters, stating that, in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, the wilderness from Natchez to Kentucky, and the river Mississippi, was infested by a notorious gang of highway robbers, headed by a certain Samuel Mason, and that the petitioner was the means by which the said Mason was killed, two of his accomplices apprehended and executed, and the remainder of the banditti dispersed, and praying he may be allowed the reward offered for the apprehension of the said Mason by the President of the United States, or by the then Governor of the Mississippi Territory; and the petition was read, and referred to a select committee, to consider and report thereon; and Messrs. Clay , Whiteside , and Crawford , were appointed the committee.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16) by United States. Congress

It may or it may not be a natural good or evil.
— from Slavery Ordained of God by F. A. (Frederick Augustus) Ross

The results in winning sinners, so far as they owed anything to the hymns and hymn-tunes, were apt to be a new generation of Christian recruits as sombre as the singing.
— from The Story of the Hymns and Tunes by Hezekiah Butterworth