As allied or representative species, when inhabiting a continuous area, are generally distributed in such a manner that each has a wide range, with a comparatively narrow neutral territory between them, in which they become rather suddenly rarer and rarer; then, as varieties do not essentially differ from species, the same rule will probably apply to both; and if we take a varying species inhabiting a very large area, we shall have to adapt two varieties to two large areas, and a third variety to a narrow intermediate zone.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Thou dost bind The elements in balanced harmony, So that the hot and cold, the moist and dry, Contend not; nor the pure fire leaping up Escape, or weight of waters whelm the earth.
— from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

What would be thought of a witness who should testify in court to the truth of an occurrence of which he did not know the year, or even the century, in which it took place, or who could come no nearer than one hundred and thirty-three years in fixing or guessing at the time.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness before a Coroner's Jury.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

" And effectively, in a few hours, her intelligence served her so well, that she learned that this conquest of mine was no other than Mr. Norbert, a gentleman originally of great fortune, which, with a constitution naturally not the best, he had vastly impaired by his over-violent pursuit of the vices of the town; in the course of which, having worn out and staled all the more common modes of debauchery, he had fallen into a taste of maiden-hunting; in which chase he had ruined a number of girls, sparing no expense to compass his ends, and generally using them well till tired, or cooled by enjoying, or springing a new face, he could with more ease disembarrass himself of the old ones, and resign them to their fate, as his sphere of achievements of that sort lay only amongst such as he could proceed with by way of bargain and sale.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

Footnote 1: The letter is, with other contributions not now traceable to him, by Henry Martyn, son of Edward Martyn, Esq., of Melksham, Wilts.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

That formidable host, alas! is coldly nerveless now To drive the vulture from his gorge, or scare the carrion crow.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

On to their houses, high and vast, Where stores of precious wealth were massed, The melancholy Bráhmans passed, Their hearts with anguish cleft: Aloof from all, they came not near To stranger or to kinsman dear, Showing in faces blank and drear That not one joy was left.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

The events that we had to chronicle needed no trickery of headlines or large type to command attention.
— from History of Linn County Iowa From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911] by Luther Albertus Brewer

I have omitted a long list of trees, the names of which, conveying no notion to an English ear, and wanting the characteristic epithets of Ovid's or of Spenser's well-known and picturesque forest description, would only perplex the reader with several lines of unintelligible words.
— from Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems by Henry Hart Milman

The military and naval force far exceeds in number the whole civil population; and this, too, when the natives are quiet and submissive, few in number, and fast dying out through the inordinate use of the worst kind of tobacco, pulmonary consumption and other concomitants of civilization not necessary to enumerate.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 86, February, 1875 by Various

“There was,” he continued, “no necessity to know Peter, as many have reckoned, in the Bishop of Rome, (teaching) that except we knew him and his holy college, we could not be of Christ’s Church.
— from The Eve of the Reformation Studies in the Religious Life and Thought of the English people in the Period Preceding the Rejection of the Roman jurisdiction by Henry VIII by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Cheniston nodded, never taking his eyes off the other's face.
— from Afterwards by Kathlyn Rhodes

CHAPTER NINE Neither Thor nor Muskwa went near the caribou meat after the big fight.
— from The Grizzly King: A Romance of the Wild by James Oliver Curwood

Of a leaning towards this monstrous doctrine, the Calvinistic churches have been specially accused; and there can be no doubt, that in Scotland and other countries where a Calvinistic creed is professed, notions of this kind will always {253} find an open soil in souls of a certain nature, notions too that will often be practically acted upon even where they are not theoretically professed; but it is historically certain, that of all Christian teachers the great Genevan reformer himself was the least chargeable with any absurdity of this kind.
— from Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism by John Stuart Blackie

When he sees the purple buds appear: For he knows, though the great black frost may blight The hope of May in a single night, That the spring, though it shrink back under the bark, But bides its time somewhere in the dark— Though it come not now to its blossoming, By the thrill in his heart he knows the spring; And the greater to-morrow is on its way ".
— from Library Ideals by Henry Eduard Legler

O my God, I can neber, neber tell de trouble I's had.
— from A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland by Laura S. (Laura Smith) Haviland