The laws of stimulation and of association may well be indispensable actors in all attention's performances, and may even be a good enough 'stock-company' to carry on many performances without aid; and yet they may at times simply form the background for a 'star-performer,' who is no more their 'inert accompaniment' or their 'incidental product' than Hamlet is Horatio's and Ophelia's.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

I could not be cordial in my invitation, but if she chuses to come no want of cordiality on my part will keep her away.
— from Lady Susan by Jane Austen

I come next to those characteristics of mental phenomena which arise out of mnemic causation.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

“I believe that those fears are somewhat exaggerated and I hope to be able to carry out my plans without meeting any great opposition in that quarter.” “Yes, if they extend their hands to you; no, if they withhold them.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

I wish, sir, to set some investigations of this kind afloat in France; and should they lead to a confirmation of my principles, when your constitution is revised, the rights of woman may be respected, if it be fully proved that reason calls for this respect, and loudly demands JUSTICE for one half of the human race.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

The courtesy of M. Paulmier would deprive me of the pleasure of giving it to you now, for he has obliged me since a great deal beyond the worth of my book.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

For instance, we could in this way ascertain why it is that in the case of many people who are partaking freely of wine, the fluid which they have drunk is rapidly absorbed 410 through the body and almost the whole of it is passed by the kidneys within a very short time.
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

After dinner who comes in but my Lady Batten, and a troop of a dozen women almost, and expected, as I found afterward, to be made mighty much of, but nobody minded them; but the best jest was, that when they saw themselves not regarded, they would go away, and it was horrible foule weather; and my Lady Batten walking through the dirty lane with new spicke and span white shoes, she dropped one of her galoshes in the dirt, where it stuck, and she forced to go home without one, at which she was horribly vexed, and I led her; and after vexing her a little more in mirth, I parted, and to Glanville’s, where I knew Sir John Robinson, Sir G. Smith, and Captain Cocke were gone, and there, with the company of Mrs. Penington, whose father, I hear, was one of the Court of justice, and died prisoner, of the stone, in the Tower, I made them, against their resolutions, to stay from houre to houre till it was almost midnight, and a furious, darke and rainy, and windy, stormy night, and, which was best, I, with drinking small beer, made them all drunk drinking wine, at which Sir John Robinson made great sport.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Leibniz's conception of many possible worlds seems to accord much better with modern logic and with the practical empiricism which is now universal.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

To build up English industry and commerce on mercantilist principles was the basis of the Whig economic system.
— from The Colonization of North America, 1492-1783 by Herbert Eugene Bolton

That showed me that consent on my part was important—which meant that he saw no possible way of carrying the enterprise to the end we had mapped out unless I stepped into the gap.
— from Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated by Thomas William Lawson

There is another class of mental phenomena which may be said to be abnormal, in this, that the intellectual faculties and the bodily organs do not preserve the same relations to each other in all respects that they do when we are fully awake.
— from Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry by George Ticknor Curtis

He hath grievously afflicted me (by God’s permission) by infatuating or bewitching three or four who live in a corner of my parish with Quaker notions, [who] now hold a separate meeting by themselves.”
— from The Emancipation of Massachusetts by Brooks Adams

When I have thought of him in these lights, (and that as a man of sense he will sooner see his errors, than another,) I own to you, that I have had some difficulty to avoid taking the path they so violently endeavour to make me shun: and all that command of my passions which has been attributed to me as my greatest praise, and, in so young a creature, as my distinction, has hardly been sufficient for me.
— from Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 1 by Samuel Richardson

Over 29 per cent of Massachusetts protected workingmen idle for over four months of each year!
— from Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888 by Various

For five seconds a murderous passion all but got control of Mr. Phillips' will.
— from The Call of the South by Robert Lee Durham

Therefore, I pray your Majesty to forgive me, and to have compassion on my poor wife, my children, and my servants; having regard to my past services.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

I have as much as I can do to take care of my patient, who is, however, rather impatient sometimes, if I am long out of the room.
— from Cora and The Doctor; or, Revelations of A Physician's Wife by Madeline Leslie

This day Bossc finished his copy of my picture, which I confess I do not admire, though my wife prefers him to Browne; nor do I think it like.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 66: June/July 1668 by Samuel Pepys