This contradiction can be explained exoterically by saying that time and changed circumstances separate the two situations: having made the world perfect, God redeems it after it has become corrupt; and whereas all things are naturally good, they may by accident lose their excellence, and need to have it restored.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

The ability of its supporters gave this view a temporary popularity, but its baselessness has been effectively exposed by successive critics.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide Vol. 1 Part 1 by Various

But rise;—let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere; but strive In offices of love, how we may lighten Each other's burden, in our share of woe; Since this day's death denounced, if aught I see, Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil; A long day's dying, to augment our pain; And to our seed (O hapless seed!) derived.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

The conception of quantity cannot be explained except by saying that it is the determination of a thing whereby it can be cogitated how many times one is placed in it.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

Notwithstanding the applause which has been bestowed on the eloquence and sagacity of Constantine, 78 a Roman general, whose religion might be still a subject of doubt, and whose mind had not been enlightened either by study or by inspiration, was indifferently qualified to discuss, in the Greek language, a metaphysical question, or an article of faith.
— 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

Notwithstanding the applause which has been bestowed on the eloquence and sagacity of Constantine, a Roman general, whose religion might be still a subject of doubt, and whose mind had not been enlightened either by study or by inspiration, was indifferently qualified to discuss, in the Greek language, a metaphysical question, or an article of faith.
— 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 a moral reform could hardly be effected except by similarly taking into account the existing beliefs and customs of mankind.
— from The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Alfred William Benn

But his long course of importunities to all possessed of the means of helping or hindering in the years after 1603 is not to be explained either by style, or by spasms of despair.
— from Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography by W. (William) Stebbing

The Instinctive Mind is also the "habit mind" in which is stored up all the little, and great, habits of many lives, or rather such as have not been entirely effaced by subsequent habits of a stronger nature.
— from A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga by William Walker Atkinson

There was nothing to show that in the island there were not many of such natural wells, and the apparition of the column of smoke could be easily explained by so simple a geological phenomenon.
— from Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery by Jules Verne

Kate, whose sense of the ridiculous, was too genuine to be extinguished, even by sincere vexation at so unwelcome a visit, rose to re [260] ceive him with an irrepressible smile, at the contrast between Mrs. Storey's despairing fuss, and his calm, unconscious, high-bred entré .
— from Kate Vernon: A Tale. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Mrs. Alexander

Hospital nurses are not women attempting or following “counsels of perfection,” (whatever incorporation of other elements may be eventually effected), but some of those many women whom God has ordained to earn their bread by toil, (and in the large towns of England honest ways of earning that bread are for women but too scarce and too overcrowded), and upon whom He has laid the same condition as on all the souls He has made, to keep the commandments to enter into life.
— from Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War by Florence Nightingale

It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.
— from Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone