For there can be no reasonable doubt that, in both cases, a nervous mechanism is developed in the course of this self-education, corresponding with that which the lower animals inherit from their parents.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

We ought to have said 'paths left in the hemispherical cortex by former currents,' and nothing more.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

No sound but a cawing of crows, and no motion but their black flying figures from over-head, reflected in the mirror of the pond below.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

I warrant the legends of the Heralds’ College are not more authentic than mine was.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

The picturesque ruins of Bothwell Castle stand on the banks of the Clyde, about nine miles above Glasgow.
— from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott

First, Defoe was a jack-at-all-trades, as well as a writer; his interest was largely with the working classes, and notwithstanding many questionable practices, he seems to have had some continued purpose of educating and uplifting the common people.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Thy sons, Edina, social, kind, With open arms the stranger hail; Their views enlarg'd, their liberal mind, Above the narrow, rural vale: Attentive still to Sorrow's wail, Or modest Merit's silent claim; And never may their sources fail!
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

Self-maintenance is his first effort, and as soon as he has made provision for that, he only strives after the propagation of the species: as a merely natural being he can attempt no more.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

One was Judson Parker; the other was Jerry Corcoran, a Newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lynde would have told you in eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been PROVED.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

She noticed that Father Ademar gave her fewer penances than Father Dominic used to do; that he treated her mistakes as mistakes only, and not as sins; that generally his ideas of sin had to do rather with the root of evil in the heart than with the diligent pruning of particular branches; that he said a great deal about Christ, and not much about the saints.
— from The White Rose of Langley A Story of the Olden Time by Emily Sarah Holt

Somewhere in the depths of the countryside of the People's Republic of China, a naturally mutated submicroscopic microbe has the nerve to be aerodynamically transferred to the smoggy air of Taiwan.
— from Terminal Compromise by Winn Schwartau

In due time the playground gate was reached, amid tremendous cheering, and next moment, driving before them some of their demoralised opponents, the vanguard of the school burst in.
— from The Willoughby Captains by Talbot Baines Reed

However, by wholly cutting off the lower, and adding to the power of the higher classes, it was supposed that the higher would keep their money in that fund to make profit,—that the vote would be a secondary consideration, and no more than a guard to the property,—and that therefore any abuse which tended to depreciate the value of their stock would be warmly resented by such proprietors.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions are not made, but grow.
— from Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions by Herbert Spencer

7. The scientific notions that the soul forms of sense-objects, by discursive reason, and which should rather be called opinions, 132 are posterior to the objects (they deal with); and consequently, are no more than images of them.
— from Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1 In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods by Plotinus

Mr. Mace recognized him, and whispered to the Coroner, and next moment, greatly to his surprise, Strong was summoned by name out of the crowd, and sworn by the Coroner's clerk.
— from The Heart of a Mystery by T. W. (Thomas Wilkinson) Speight

If, however, the navy were to suffer decisive defeat, if it were driven to seek the shelter of its fortified harbours and kept there, or if it were destroyed—then, not only would every part of the Empire be open to invasion, but the communication between the several parts would be cut, and no mutual succour would be possible.
— from The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2 by Stephen Lucius Gwynn

Where the small farms prevail public-spirited citizens are naturally more plentiful, as the population is greater, and the good-roads movement is thereby the gainer.
— from In Pastures Green by Peter McArthur

Just cordial, and no more.
— from Harper's Round Table, October 22, 1895 by Various