But if we come down from that very high standpoint, there is no longer a valid moral reason for condemning suicide.
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Now there are beings who cannot have too much of them, as perhaps the gods; there are others, again, to whom no particle of them is of use, those who are incurably wicked to whom all things are hurtful; others to whom they are useful to a certain degree: for this reason then the province of Justice is among Men.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Is it to tell the maids to leave their master's business and cook dinner for them?
— from The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original by Homer

——There you push the argument again too far, cried Didius ——for there is no prohibition in nature, though there is in the Levitical law——but that a * Vide Brook Abridg.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

By an exact consequence, drawn from this principle of policy and religion, the triumph was reserved to the emperor; and his most successful lieutenants were satisfied with some marks of distinction, which, under the name of triumphal honors, were invented in their favor.
— 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

The admission that life may have appeared on the earth under the influence of natural forces and according to physical laws and conditions different from those of the present era throws a vivid light on the study of biogenesis, spontaneous generation, and evolution.
— from The Mechanism of Life by Stéphane Leduc

"Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain.
— from Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson

So Independence was “razeed,” cut down from three decks to two, and transformed from an unsuccessful ship-of-the-line into a very good 54-gun frigate—the largest and one of the fastest in the Navy.
— from Charlestown Navy Yard: Boston National Historical Park, Massachusetts by United States. National Park Service

Some eight miles south of Briançon, on the road to Fort Dauphin, a little river called the Gyronde comes down from the glaciers of Mont Pelvoux, and falls into the Durance nearly opposite the village of La Bessie.
— from The Huguenots in France by Samuel Smiles

The crowd rushed toward it—hurried, muttering, armed with nondescript weapons, as though the Indians were come down from the mountain fastnesses once more; and then, as the cortege from Apple Orchard passed beyond the old fort, the meaning of all the commotion was visible.
— from The Last of the Foresters Or, Humors on the Border; A story of the Old Virginia Frontier by John Esten Cooke

One by one the machines, which ordinarily came back before daybreak, landed, and the pilot and the observer of each climbed clumsily down from their cramped seats.
— from Air Service Boys Over the Rhine; Or, Fighting Above the Clouds by Charles Amory Beach

Then he goes on, taking this change as a matter of course, "'Thou shalt meet a company of singers coming down from the high place—'" Whereupon he again interrupts himself, and in an irresistible explanatory aside, which instantly raises the desired picture in the mind of every one, he says: "That means, from the little old church on the hill, you know."
— from The Story of Fifty-Seven Cents by Robert Shackleton

I say custom of the Americans, as it is the case in nine houses out of ten; only the more wealthy travelled, and refined portion of the community in their cities deviating from the general practice.
— from Diary in America, Series Two by Frederick Marryat

It is in vain for us to ask why it is permitted that so much power for evil should be within the grasp of one wretched human creature, but it is at least always instructive to ponder the career of these crowned conspirators, and sometimes consoling to find its conclusion different from the goal intended.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

The pretension, that the powers of Congress, derived from the Constitution and its supplementary texts, were all foreclosed, and that the definition of a republican government was dishonored, merely by the indirect operation of the clause imposing a penalty upon a State, is the last effort of the champions.
— from Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 17 (of 20) by Charles Sumner