" "A long stretch, sir," said the clerk, with that exaggerated idea of distances, and that vivid perception of difficulties in getting from place to place, which is peculiar to all country people.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

There are three qualifications necessary for those who fill the first departments in government; first of all, an affection for the established constitution; second place, abilities every way completely equal to the business of their office; in the third, virtue and justice correspondent to the nature of that particular state they are placed in; for if justice is not the same in all states, it is evident that there must be different species thereof.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

“The penalty of death, I greatly fear; they have gone too far for him to pardon them, and there is nothing left to them but one thing, and that is to kill him.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Clitiphon complains in [5085] Tatius of Leucippe's sweet tunes, he heard her play by chance upon the lute, and sing a pretty song to it in commendations of a rose, out of old Anacreon belike; Rosa honor decusque florum, Rosa flos odorque divum, Hominum rosa est voluptas, Decus illa Gratiarum, Florente amoris hora, Rosa suavium Diones, &c. Rose the fairest of all flowers.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The seed boiled in wine and drank, is good for those that are bitten with serpents, or have eaten poisonous herbs, or mushrooms.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

And as the former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently denotes."
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

What is over and above satisfying the limited desire, is given for the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be altogether endless.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The seed cleared from the down, bruised and boiled in wine, and drank, is good for inward tormenting pains.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

Bearing in mind that the mutual relation of organism to organism is of the highest importance, we can see why two areas, having nearly the same physical conditions, should often be inhabited by very different forms of life; for according to the length of time which has elapsed since the colonists entered one of the regions, or both; according to the nature of the communication which allowed certain forms and not others to enter, either in greater or lesser numbers; according or not as those which entered happened to come into more or less direct competition with each other and with the aborigines; and according as the immigrants were capable of varying more or less rapidly, there would ensue in the to or more regions, independently of their physical conditions, infinitely diversified conditions of life; there would be an almost endless amount of organic action and reaction, and we should find some groups of beings greatly, and some only slightly modified; some developed in great force, some existing in scanty numbers—and this we do find in the several great geographical provinces of the world.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

But as a rule rotten work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality."
— from The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler

This made the opposite Lords, as Bristoll and Buckingham, so mad, that they declared and protested against it, speaking very broad that there was mutiny and rebellion in the hearts of the Lords, and that they desired they might enter their dissents, which they did do, in great fury.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1667 N.S. by Samuel Pepys

I agreed with thoughtful men [1] who deemed it good for neither world to be isolated from the other, [Pg 2] or unsympathetic towards the other, and, to lessen this isolation, at least in one department of science, I swerved, for a time, from those original researches which have been the real pursuit and pleasure of my life.
— from Six Lectures on Light Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 by John Tyndall

"What was Rhodes doing in Germany for twelve months," he cried, "tell me that?"
— from The Siege of Kimberley Its Humorous and Social Side; Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902); Eighteen Weeks in Eighteen Chapters by T. Phelan

Yes,—a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,—aye, and left it swinging to this day.—Still, if I were you, I wouldn’t go to the tailor’s, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit.
— from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The practice of eating but two meals a day is generally found a benefit to health; yet under some circumstances, persons may require a third meal.
— from The Food Question: Health and Economy by Various

Letter to the New York Observer—An Offer to Pay One Thousand Dollars in Gold for Proof that Thomas Paine or Voltaire Died in Terror because of any Religious Opinions Either had Expressed— Proposition to Create a Tribunal to Hear the Evidence—The Ob-server, after having Called upon Col. Ingersoll to Deposit the Money, and Characterized his Talk as "Infidel 'Buncombe,'" Denies its Own Words, but attempts to Prove them— Its Memory Refreshed by Col. Ingersoll and the Slander Refuted—Proof that Paine did Not Recant - -Testimony of Thomas Nixon, Daniel Pelton, Mr. Jarvis, B. F. Has-kin, Dr. Manley, Amasa Woodsworth, Gilbert Vale, Philip Graves, M. D., Willet Hicks, A. C. Hankinson, John Hogeboom, W. J. Hilton, Tames Cheetham, Revs.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats!
— from Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 by Various

I believe such ideas to be as profoundly ungenerous and unjust as they are evidently self-contradictory, and I believe that they will be adjudged by history to be, so far as they are in any degree in good faith, superficial, partial, and utterly incapable of serving as any explanation of the method of the evolution of the great problem of Italian nationality.
— from Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century by Giuseppe Garibaldi

Some new method must be devised to check them; a lucky expedient occurred to me; I ordered the guns to be loaded with small shot: these scattering, brought them down in great flocks, and soon half of them were destroyed; the rest laid [163] down their weapons and surrendered.
— from Niels Klim's journey under the ground being a narrative of his wonderful descent to the subterranean lands; together with an account of the sensible animals and trees inhabiting the planet Nazar and the firmament. by Ludvig Holberg