This discovery that a race is transformed by its action upon itself and upon the elements it absorbs from without, wipes away at a stroke the popular belief in “predestined races” or providential “great men” appearing at crucial moments and riding victorious across the world.
— from The Ways of Men by Eliot Gregory

It would thus appear that the central and northern belief in perpetual reincarnation of primal spirits is not primitive, yet the Arunta method of acquiring totems does not exist save by grace of this belief, PLUS the isolated belief in primal sacred stones.
— from The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia by K. Langloh (Katie Langloh) Parker

He contented himself with general utterances, and was not betrayed into personal reflections or prophecies of ruin.
— from Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860 by James Gillespie Blaine