There is a way of winning more by love, And urging of tho modesty, than fear: Force works on servile natures, not the free.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when they wrote these books.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Mind does not accompany body like a useless and persistent shadow; it is significant and it is intermittent.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

The sexton walked by, looked at us in amazement, and began pulling the rope.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

And, indeed, since Saul had accepted kingly power, which naturally becomes ungovernable and tyrannical, as God foretold, and the experience of all ages has shown, the Divine settlement by Moses had soon been laid aside under the kings, had not God, by keeping strictly to his laws, and severely executing the threatenings therein contained, restrained Saul and other kings in some degree of obedience to himself; nor was even this severity sufficient to restrain most of the future kings of Israel and Judah from the grossest idolatry and impiety.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

He wound up, by a hint, evidently intentional, volunteered hastily, that Stavrogin was perhaps a very important personage, but that there was some secret about that, that he had been living among us, so to say, incognito, that he had some commission, and that very possibly he would come back to us again from Petersburg.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She heard them, and felt that it was unseemly to desert little children in their fright; she went back, hesitating, but she must needs go back, like an unwilling spirit, summoned by the incantations of a diviner.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

The appearance of Leo might disgust the most eager disciple, he was clothed in the mantle of a philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black hair; his beard long an uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments, or even the perspicuity, of Latin elocution.
— 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

He is an amiable man, an able preacher, and has been longer among us." Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

"His image" seems to me to mean his simulation, to wit, in those [Pg 367] men who profess to believe, but live as unbelievers.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Jack's non-appearance suited Columbine, and she would have been glad to be let alone until October first, which date now seemed appallingly close.
— from The Mysterious Rider by Zane Grey

Little difference would it have made to the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the siege of Sherton Castle, while attacking in the service of the Parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county jail.
— from A Changed Man, and Other Tales by Thomas Hardy

For 72 after we’d made a bend in the stream and put some distance between Lupo and us, we decided it was no use runnin’ any farther.
— from The Radio Boys Rescue the Lost Alaska Expedition by Gerald Breckenridge

It will be observed that Mr. Tyrrell leaves out of consideration in this paper a couple of areas included in the term “Barren Lands” as used in this chapter, namely the country south and southeast of the eastern arm of Great Slave lake, and a triangular piece of country in the angle between the same sheet of water and Yellowknife river.
— from The Unexploited West A Compilation of all of the authentic information available at the present time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada by Ernest J. Chambers

It should be noted that the officers and workers of the International Brotherhood League are unsalaried and receive no remuneration, and this, as one of the most binding rules of the organization, effectually excludes those who would otherwise enter from motives of self-interest .
— from Universal Brotherhood, Volume XIII, No. 10, January 1899 A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, the Theosophical Movement, Philosophy, Science and Art by Various

"The Assyrian barbarians laugh at us, saying that we give more to the dead than the living; but they would weep over their own lack of care for the dead did they know the mystery of death and the tomb as do the priests of Egypt."
— from The Pharaoh and the Priest: An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt by Bolesław Prus

The Boers considered, and with justice, that if they were to be left as undisputed victors in the war then they should have the full fruits of victory.
— from The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle

He did not seem to have anything very much to say but looked at us with large melancholy eyes.
— from The Dark Forest by Hugh Walpole

One day as she went to the temple to pray to the gods she found the entrance crowded by a band of men, half naked, emaciated and devoured by leprosy and ulcers.
— from Balthasar and Other Works - 1909 by Anatole France