For if it happened that an individual, even when asleep, had some very distinct idea, as, for example, if a geometer should discover some new demonstration, the circumstance of his being asleep would not militate against its truth; and as for the most ordinary error of our dreams, which consists in their representing to us various objects in the same way as our external senses, this is not prejudicial, since it leads us very properly to suspect the truth of the ideas of sense; for we are not infrequently deceived in the same manner when awake; as when persons in the jaundice see all objects yellow, or when the stars or bodies at a great distance appear to us much smaller than they are.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

There the affairs of the community were discussed by day, and the unmarried men slept at night.
— from The Old Man of the Mountain by Herbert Strang

Every fellow present was dead against the usher, Mr. Shalders, when he took advantage of a pause to strike in with his “Murat!”
— from Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete by George Meredith

I could but suppose that the young man must indeed be a terrible criminal, for a person of years so grave, and station so high, to intimate accusations so vaguely dark, and to use means so extraordinary, in order to enlist my imagination rather than my reason against a youth in whom there appeared none of the signs which suspicion interprets into guilt.
— from A Strange Story — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Then one day, as the unhappy monarch sat upon his gorgeous throne, sunk in the most abject misery, Iblis, in the guise of a skilled physician, once more presented himself before the King, and, after examination and mature deliberation, thus spake the cunning one unto his prey: “O Shelter of the Universe, I have searched the heavens diligently concerning the horrible evil which hath fallen upon thee, and in thy horoscope I read a bitter tale.
— from The Story of Rustem, and other Persian hero tales from Firdusi by Elizabeth D. Renninger

June 18th the Central Council of the Building Interests issued the following address to the public: The Central Council of the Building Interests of Chicago, which now addresses you, was organized June 1st, 1887, under the following circumstances: When, on the 29th of April last, the United Order of Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago decided, without consultation with their employers, that they would only receive their pay every two weeks on Saturdays, the Master Masons' association refused to comply with the demand, and the union men struck on their work wherever it was refused.
— from 30,000 Locked Out: The Great Strike of the Building Trades in Chicago by James C. Beeks

Feeling a fool, I went and sat down again, taking up my splint.
— from A Diary Without Dates by Enid Bagnold