Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

Moreover, a girl forcibly enjoyed by one who does not understand the hearts of girls becomes nervous, uneasy, and dejected, and suddenly begins to hate the man who has taken advantage of her; and then, when her love is not understood or returned, she sinks into despondency, and becomes either a hater of mankind altogether, or, hating her own man, she has recourse to other men.
— from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks by Vatsyayana

But in their homes, in the dance, in the assembly and the banquet all their thought was only for their captive maidens; until some god put desperate courage in our hearts no more to receive our lords on their return from Thrace within our towers so that they might either heed the right or might depart and begone elsewhither, they and their captives.
— from The Argonautica by Rhodius Apollonius

Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies, followed Mr. F., the third week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucian who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave at dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroines in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careers and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Incredible are the folly and perversity of a public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed to-day and are still wet from the press.
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

In these general considerations it is also remarkable that the ideas of reason are unlike the categories, of no service to the use of our understanding in experience, but quite dispensable, and become even an impediment to the maxims of a rational cognition of nature.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

Danglars threw himself upon his goat-skin, and Peppino, reclosing the door, again began eating his peas and bacon.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

When the children were not well at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts—and how was she to know that they were all adulterated?
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Doubtless the local event would very soon be resolved into demoniac agency, because, ever since the miracle of Gadara, the people have always linked the association of demons and swine; and they refer to the five small dark punctures always visible on the hoof of the hog as the points of entrance and departure for the fiend.
— from Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall by Robert Stephen Hawker

He had handled with marvellous dexterity the selfish intrigues of foreign Courts, which he could approach only as the powerless agent of a discredited and bankrupt exile.
— from Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02 by Craik, Henry, Sir

For those exist whose pure ethereal minds, Imbibing portions of celestial day, Scorn all terrestrial cares, all mean designs, As bright-eyed eagles scorn the lunar ray.
— from The Life of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. LL.D., Volume 1 (of 2) by John Ayrton Paris

We can never know Washington's thoughts at that time, for he was ever silent, but as we listen in imagination to the sound of the even footfalls which the guard heard all through that September night, we can dimly guess the feelings of the strong and passionate nature, wounded and distressed almost beyond endurance.
— from George Washington, Volume I by Henry Cabot Lodge

The husband, when he sat down to his meal, found his order disregarded and, being enraged thereat, threw the cabbage against the wall, and went out in a rage.
— from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India by Pandit Natesa Sastri

Folk singing and dancing are being encouraged in numerous schools.
— from Problems in American Democracy by Thames Williamson

No: MEN, high-minded MEN, With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude: Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain; Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: These constitute a state; And SOVEREIGN LAW, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill."
— from The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Edwin Percy Whipple

What thanks derive for having wasted my best days and best energies, in bruising with my iron heel the head of the serpent of heresy?
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844 by Various

I ever did, and believe ever shall, like women best— "Just in the noon of life—those golden days, When the mind ripens as the form decays."
— from Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) by Lewis Melville