By their very nature, these "causes" escape observation, so that their explanatory value can be neither confirmed nor refuted by further observation or experience.
— from How We Think by John Dewey

The question has been raised whether this rarification is to be considered entirely of scorbutic origin.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess

Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of 'Snatch her! snatch her!
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

—Will any of your readers who may be metrical scholars, inform me whether there is any classical example of such an accent and cæsura as in this verse of Vida?
— from Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 97, September 6, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

Our books are false by being fragmentary; the sentences are "bon mots," and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure in nature—or worse.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

The white has leaves somewhat like to Beets, but smaller, rounder and of a whitish green colour, every one standing upon a small long footstalk: the stalk rises up two or three feet high, with such like leaves thereon; the flowers grow at the top in long round tufts, or clusters, wherein are contained small and round seeds; the root is very full of threads or strings.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

We shall now turn to examine the religion of the Canaanites, which we shall find to partake largely of the common elements of Semitic religion.
— from The Evolution of Old Testament Religion by W. E. (William Edwin) Orchard

They had belonged to The World Citizenship—I explained to him there are certain steps he had to do, such as taking an oath of loyalty to a foreign power, voting in a foreign country election, or some method that is recognized defectively as loss of citizenship.
— from Warren Commission (11 of 26): Hearings Vol. XI (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

If, for reasons before stated, we assume a continual extinction of species and appearance of others on the globe, it will then follow that the fossils of strata formed at two distant periods on the same spot will differ even more certainly than the mineral composition of those strata.
— from The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) by Various

20. COOPER, Sir Daniel, Knt. S. of Thomas Cooper, Esq., of Sydney, and formerly of Bolton, Lancashire.
— from The Aristocracy of London: Part I: Kensington Titled, Untitled, Professional, & Commercial by Anonymous

And the incredible conclusion of the matter was that we were actually within their lines in another hour; saw them as large as life within a mile and a half on either side of us; and must every man of us have been taken prisoner had not every man but Connal refused to go one inch further, and had not the Boers themselves obviously suspected some subtle ruse as the only conceivable explanation of so madcap a manoeuvre.
— from Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

From the very endeavor after excellence comes a certain exaltation of spirit, which ennobles the least fragment of daily toil.
— from The Warriors by Anna Robertson Brown Lindsay

The company was very miscellaneous, French, Germans, and Spaniards, all speaking in their respective languages, whilst at the ends of the table, confronting each other, sat two Catalan merchants, one of whom weighed nearly twenty stone, grunting across the board in their harsh dialect.
— from The Bible in Spain Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula by George Borrow

Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums where securities are not the best.
— from Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan by F. H. (Franklin Hiram) King