But what can be done about it?
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Theophrastus, in his treatise on Ethics, discusses whether a man's character can be changed by disease, and whether virtue depends upon bodily health.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

Although we cannot avoid speaking of the smallest parts into which matter can be divided, and although we cannot imagine, on the other hand, how any portions of matter can exist and not be divisible into parts, we are probably quite as incapable of saving ourselves from paradox by resort to the vortex hypothesis in any form.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

But the principles of pure reason cannot be constitutive even in regard to empirical conceptions, because no sensuous schema corresponding to them can be discovered, and they cannot therefore have an object in concreto.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

Esto es lo que se halla hoy en cien brazas de agua
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

It is not of that kind which can be demonstrated arithmetically upon the tips of the fingers.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see, And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be— Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth, With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

It could be defended as a logical reading of the Gillem Board's declaration that "the proportion of Negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population" should be accepted in the peacetime Army to insure an orderly and uniform mobilization in a national emergency.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

'I understand your honour perfectly; it can be dune as easy as taking out a decreet in absence.'
— from Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Volume 2 by Walter Scott

Give a poor author a chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent’s holiday.”
— from The Celebrity at Home by Violet Hunt

Then to James's utter surprise Clemency broke down, and began to cry.
— from 'Doc.' Gordon by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

The hand is thrust into [83] every crevice that can be detected, and if there is a cray-fish, its presence is made known by the sharp thorny points of the head,—for the cray-fish always lies in the hole with its head towards the entrance.
— from The Common Objects of the Country by J. G. (John George) Wood

By degrees another pellicle is formed, which surrounds the first; the menstrual blood, being suppressed, abundantly supplies it with nutriment, and which coagulates by degrees, and becomes flesh; this flesh articulates itself in proportion as it grows, and receives its form from the spirit; each part proceeds to take its proper place; the solid particles go to their respective situations and the fluid to theirs: each matter seeks for that which is most like itself, and the fœtus is at length entirely formed by these causes and these means."
— from Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10) Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c. by Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de

But either the instinct of the convict, beaten, driven, and debased, or the influence of the child, which was still strong upon him, impelled him, after the first momentary pause, to flee as though seeking safety.
— from The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and Selected Essays by Charles W. (Charles Waddell) Chesnutt

Correct tone-production cannot be directly acquired by the singing of single tones.
— from The Psychology of Singing A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern by David C. (David Clark) Taylor

Cynthia bent down and examined both articles closely.
— from The Boarded-Up House by Augusta Huiell Seaman