For the regulative law of systematic unity requires us to study nature on the supposition that systematic and final unity in infinitum is everywhere discoverable, even in the highest diversity.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

He who has attained to this point, still always feels, as a living body, as concrete manifestation of will, the natural disposition for every kind of volition; but he intentionally suppresses it, for he compels himself to refrain from doing all that he would like to do, and to do all that he would like not to do, even if this has no further end than that of serving as a mortification of will.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindostan: the soubahs of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmoud was despised even in the harem of Delhi.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna Mikháylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasíli and the eldest princess were sitting close together talking.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The country which we visit at week-ends was really a home to it, and the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearnings for love, have their deepest expression in the heart of the fields.
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

The province of Mr. Waite is to deny everything inconvenient to him.
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

The thought, too, is usually artless and direct, except in the hymns to the ritual deities, where it becomes involved in conceit and mystical obscurity.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

We should give men credit for originality at least in their dreams, even if they have little of it to show elsewhere; and as it was discovered but recently that all memories are not furnished with the like material images, but often have no material images whatever, so it may have to be acknowledged that the disparity in men's soliloquies is enormous, and that some races, perhaps, live content without soliloquising at all.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Philip of Macedon dreamed he sealed up his wife’s belly, whereby he did expound it, that his wife should be barren; but Aristander the soothsayer told him his wife was with child, because men do not use to seal vessels that are empty.
— from Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon

With the keen wits for fun and mischief, characteristic of schoolboys, students would now and then warily peer into his sanctum at early morn or dewy eve, in the hope of settling the disputed point.
— from St Nicotine of the Peace Pipe by Edward Vincent Heward

The next night, the audience was equally large and enthusiastic, and my "farewell speech" was so deeply affecting, that there was not a dry eye in the house.
— from My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. by George Thompson

There was no religion with roots deeply entwined in the hearts of the people to oppose such a change.
— from Changing China by Cecil, Florence Mary (Bootle-Wilbraham), Lady

The thread-like mediæval tracery that forms the half-inch border to the veil, and the line of gold that just defines the contour of the crown, have not the least disturbing effect in the harmony of the whole pure composition.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

There is a good deal of secret, tender, delicate emotion in the hearts of many boys, which cannot be summarily classed and dismissed as subjective.
— from The Upton Letters by Arthur Christopher Benson

We had a capital instance of this characteristic in a nurse who came from Greenock, and who thoroughly despised everything in the Highlands.
— from Philip Gilbert Hamerton An Autobiography, 1834-1858, and a Memoir by His Wife, 1858-1894 by Eugénie Hamerton

It was a vile and an abominable thing that they were doing, even if they had not planned to culminate it with murder.
— from The White Moll by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard

She needed all her courage and cheerfulness, for her mother was quite unable to rise; and whatever was to be done either in the house or out of it, must be done by her to-day.
— from Stephen Grattan's Faith: A Canadian Story by Margaret M. (Margaret Murray) Robertson