“Then you should certainly lecture on Philosophy,” said the Dragon-fly; and he spread a pair of lovely gauze wings and soared away into the sky.
— from The Happy Prince, and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde

But with a certain lack of practical sense which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea; and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen to pieces.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

In those presentments in Tennyson (see the "Idylls of the King"—what sumptuous, perfumed, arras-and-gold Nature, inimitably described, better than any, fit for princes and knights and peerless ladies—wrathful or peaceful, just the same—Vivien and Merlin in their strange dalliance, or the death-float of Elaine, or Geraint and the long journey of his disgraced Enid and himself through the wood, and the wife all day driving the horses,) as in all the great imported art-works, treatises systems, from Lucretius down, there is a constantly lurking often pervading something, that will have to be eliminated, as not only unsuited to modern democracy and science in America, but insulting to them, and disproved by them.{37} Still, the rule and demesne of poetry will always be not the exterior, but interior; not the macrocosm, but microcosm; not Nature, but Man.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

The existence of such a mechanism would compensate losses of physical strength in the individual by the greatly increased strength of the larger unit, of the unit, that is to say, upon which natural selection still acts unmodified.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

—Pues mire Ud. este mapa, y comience la observación por su propio país. ¿
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

A race of such resentful men will of necessity eventually prove more prudent than any aristocratic race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete certainty of function of the governing unconscious instincts, or as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times noble souls have recognised each other.
— from The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sometimes there was the picturesque mountain-road to climb, sometimes the route lay through marshy peat-lands, or across a rolling grass-covered country; and with each change of landscape came some new thought and some new impression of the Celtic life, or perhaps some new description of a fairy.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

The causal laws of physics, so interpreted, differ from those of psychology only by the fact that they connect a particular with other appearances in the same piece of matter, rather than with other appearances in the same perspective.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

By “taking an interest in things” Dorothy meant forsaking her principles; by “putting on clothes like other people’s,” she meant abandoning her velvets and corduroys that took the light in such lovely broken bits of accidental colour, and dressing like one of her own impossible fashion-plates; and by being “a bit more like a human being,” she
— from Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage by Oliver Onions

The law of the land was the Customary Law of Paris, supplemented by three kinds of ordinances.
— from A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Vol. V Canada—Part I, Historical by Lucas, Charles Prestwood, Sir

From the confectioners came loaves of pane santo , a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of pan forte da Siena , compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as pernicious as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure production of nightmares.
— from What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge