“But if, on the contrary, a thing established by law is not really useful for the social relations, then it is not just; and if that which was just, inasmuch as it was useful, loses this character, after having been for some time considered so, it is not less true that, during that time, it was really just, at least for those who do not perplex themselves about vain words, but who prefer, in every case, examining and judging for themselves.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Those whose extensive researches have given them the means of judging my backslidings with more severity, will probably be lenient in proportion to their knowledge of the difficulty of my task.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

while the perogue lay on her side, finding I could not be heard, I for a moment forgot my own situation, and involluntarily droped my gun, threw aside my shot pouch and was in the act of unbuttoning my coat, before I recollected the folly of the attempt I was about to make, which was to throw myself into the river and indevour to swim to the perogue; the perogue was three hundred yards distant the waves so high that a perogue could scarcely live in any situation, the water excessively could, and the stream rappid; had I undertaken this project therefore, there was a hundred to one but what I should have paid the forfit of my life for the madness of my project, but this had the perogue been lost, I should have valued but little.—After having all matters arranged for the evening as well as the nature of circumstances would permit, we thought it a proper occasion to console ourselves and cheer the sperits of our men and accordingly took a drink of grog and gave each man a gill of sperits.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

“But he never brought light into anything quite so dark as this?”
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

the bell hanging over each door and struck with a small iron rod at every entrance and exit;—and finally, amused by looking in at the windows, as I passed along; the ladies and gentlemen drinking coffee or playing cards, and the gentlemen all smoking.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

849 As you proceed onwards, the [base] lines incline towards one another till they approach within 50 or 60 cubits.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

There being no further preliminaries to arrange, the company straggled into the town in little knots of twos and threes; and within a quarter of an hour were all seated in the great room of the Blue Lion Inn, Muggleton—Mr. Dumkins acting as chairman, and Mr. Luffey officiating as vice.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

but there is no time to be lost in exclamations——I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.——Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in—this certainly is the greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius ’s folio, Sir, to finish 125 ——a dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates, and Grangousier to relate—a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all;——such a head!—would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it!
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Mutipug-uk (matipug-uk) ang harína ug dì ayágun, The flour will become lumpy if it is not strained. tipuk v
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

They have been intoxicated with great ideas, such as liberty, or equality, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer care to consider how these ideas must be limited in practice or harmonized with the conditions of human life.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

[Footnote: The dissolution of the salts in the bed of the Bitter Lake impregnated the water admitted from the Red Sea so highly that for some time fish were not seen in that basin.
— from The Earth as Modified by Human Action by George P. (George Perkins) Marsh

Gods, grant or withhold it; your “yea” and your “nay” Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life is worth living, and here we would stay For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
— from XXXII Ballades in Blue China [1885] by Andrew Lang

this was the most wonderfull escape I ever witnessed, the hill down which he roled was almost perpendicular and broken by large irregular and broken rocks.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

My disappointment was bitter at the time; but little by little I came to realize that it was not kind or wise to force this poor dumb creature out of his element, and after awhile I felt happy in the thought that perhaps he had returned to the sea.
— 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

But loss is bitter.
— from The Window-Gazer by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Mrs. Scribbens disappeared out a door in the rear which led to the back premises, and busied herself making a fire under a large iron kettle which hung from a blackened limb, itself supported by two forked sticks sunk in the ground.
— from The Man from Jericho by Edwin Carlile Litsey

“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I have that power; for Christ has said to all his priests, “What you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”’ “Mrs. Bossey then said: ‘If you promise that you will forgive that false oath, and if you give me the one hundred and sixty acres of land you promised, I will do what you want.’
— from Fifty Years in the Church of Rome by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Accident had apparently combined all the means for gratifying the burning desire I betrayed to be let into further details of the monikin polity, morals, philosophy, and all the other great social interests of the part of the world they inhabit.
— from The Monikins by James Fenimore Cooper

The cosmopolitan bachelor living in apartments knows far more of Sanscrit than of a domestic woman's feelings as she explores the place she must call her home.
— from Without a Home by Edward Payson Roe