For as to those who, through curiosity or a desire of learning, of their own accord, perhaps, offer him their services, besides that in general their promises exceed their performance, and that they sketch out fine designs of which not one is ever realized, they will, without doubt, expect to be compensated for their trouble by the explication of some difficulties, or, at least, by compliments and useless speeches, in which he cannot spend any portion of his time without loss to himself.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

The result is a system in which both "cultural" and "utilitarian" subjects exist in an inorganic composite where the former are not by dominant purpose socially serviceable and the latter not liberative of imagination or thinking power.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

First preached in a land accursed by caste and under spiritual and secular oppressions, it acknowledged no caste, but declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally capable of being freed from sin and misery through Buddhahood, that is, knowledge or enlightenment.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

This box contained an unctuous substance partly solid, of which it was impossible to discover the color, owing to the reflection of the polished gold, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, which ornamented the box.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

And then the same squire that brought the letter and the brachet came again unto Sir Tristram, as after ye shall hear in the tale.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

Altogether the union prayer-meeting could hardly be called an unqualified success.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the [pg 007] low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast, an unknown sail.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

“Then we give them the shoot gun,” says Xury, laughing, “make them run wey.” Such English Xury spoke by conversing among us slaves.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The only lost lives are those that be cast away upon Satan and ourselves.
— from Under One Sceptre, or Mortimer's Mission: The Story of the Lord of the Marches by Emily Sarah Holt

But she stopped here once—for lunch—quite by chance and unattended, save for a poor fool she had found in the forest.
— from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates

Circumstantial evidence was strong against them, and the two unfortunate wretches were not more conscious that the sun was shining in heaven, making the narrow caboose in which they had been confined an unendurable, suffocating den of heat, than they were that when the dead were buried and grief was satisfied vengeance would make sudden and terrible work with them.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878 by Various

These boats were huge boxes, covered and uncovered, square at each end, and flat-bottomed.
— from Waterways of Westward Expansion - The Ohio River and its Tributaries by Archer Butler Hulbert

6. Subscriptions, the instalments upon which are payable in cash, or in the scrip of the towns authorized to subscribe to the stock of the Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company, under the provisions of chapter three hundred and ninety-four of the acts of the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, shall be considered as unconditional subscriptions, in compliance with the requirements of this act; and payment in the bonds of said towns shall be considered as cash.
— from Report of the Hoosac Tunnel and Troy and Greenfield Railroad, by the Joint Standing Committee of 1866. by Tappan Wentworth

[3] The tonnage through both Canadian and U. S. canals at the "Soo" in 1913 was 72,472,676, of which 39,664,874 went through the Canadian canal.
— from The Canadian Commonwealth by Agnes C. Laut

I know not whether it is to be imputed to the national character, or to that of the French republicans only, but the cruelties which have been committed are usually so mixed with licentiousness, as to preclude description.
— from A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794 Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners by Charlotte Biggs