So that the greatest advantage I derived from the study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded merely by example and custom; and thus I gradually extricated myself from many errors powerful enough to darken our natural intelligence, and incapacitate us in great measure from listening to reason.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

Such an age of great thought and great action, appealing to the eyes as well as to the imagination and intellect, finds but one adequate literary expression; neither poetry nor the story can express the whole man,--his thought, feeling, action, and the resulting character; hence in the Age of Elizabeth literature turned instinctively to the drama and brought it rapidly to the highest stage of its development.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
— from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens

I do not regard the greatness of any pain from which, by reason of the shortness of its continuance, I shall be delivered almost before it reaches me.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell him I want £ 1 or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

[Pg 81] Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap, and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day,) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
— from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

“He said the same thing to me three days ago; but I replied that I would bet two hundred pistoles that he would do nothing of the kind.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I shal the tyme see, That in this plyt I may be eft with yow; 1480 And of my lyf, god woot, how that shal be, Sin that desyr right now so byteth me, That I am deed anoon, but I retourne.
— from Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and [304] getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
— from Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 by Charles Herbert Sylvester

In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,—a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred fathoms deep and broken into ravines,—flows a torrent coming from some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and where violets also grow, and strawberries.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

One of the persons duly authorized by infallible Romish canonization is “Saint” Bridget, who lived in 1360.
— from Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 7: The Finished Mystery by C. T. (Charles Taze) Russell

Then, while he stood, dusty and bedraggled, in real pain, watching them, he saw Betty lean back against the boulder—or was it against Hy's arm?
— from The Trufflers: A Story by Samuel Merwin

FOOTNOTES: [1] The letter is, unluckily, of doubtful authenticity; but it represents Pope's probable sentiments.
— from Alexander Pope by Leslie Stephen

In the absence of an available Indian he rode to Durango and back in record time.
— from The Rainbow Trail by Zane Grey

How it came about (p. 283) that there should have been so deplorable a breakdown in respect to war material can only be a matter of conjecture; but we may hazard a pretty shrewd guess that the collapse which was to lead to such deplorable results in the early summer of 1915, was attributable to graft on a Homeric scale.
— from Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 by Callwell, C. E. (Charles Edward), Sir

The highest mortality was between a hundred and a hundred and fifty deaths a day, and by its ravages Capiz was reduced from a first-class city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants to a second-class city of less than twenty thousand.
— from A Woman's Impression of the Philippines by Mary H. (Mary Helen) Fee