But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

Next let the local groups receive names such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, ‘No marriage within the local group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe.’
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

One day Solon was conversing with some elderly wise men in the Egyptian capital of Sais, a town already 8,000 years of age, as documented by the annals engraved on the sacred walls of its temples.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as we do towards that of pain!
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

We will go to our duty while Mrs. O'Dowd will stay and enlighten you, Emmy," Captain Osborne said; and the two gentlemen, taking each a wing of the Major, walked out with that officer, grinning at each other over his head.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

We have preserved them, nevertheless, as affording at once a touching and a convincing proof of the estimation in which he was held by every class of society, and the case with which he made his way to their hearts and feelings.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

He whose voice was able to rend asunder and dash down the granite walls of the established church of Scotland, and to lead a host in solemn procession from it, as from a doomed city, was now old and enfeebled.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

This is true, and we found the first form of matter to be the electric currents of space, and the second form of matter to be the atom or molecule, and afterwards came the primordial cell or protoplasm.
— from The Universe a Vast Electric Organism by Geo. W. (George Woodward) Warder

The appeal to the "Grand' chambre," customarily allowed to persons claiming immunity on account of order or station, was expressly cut off, so as to render the course of justice more expeditious.
— from History of the Rise of the Huguenots Vol. 1 by Henry Martyn Baird

They cannot do so for the simple reason that, in them, the conditions under which I should experience certain other sensibles are themselves expressed in terms of physical objects, and not [Pg 190] in terms of sensibles and our experience of them.
— from Philosophical Studies by G. E. (George Edward) Moore

She did not look masculine, however, as she stood there, slender, and brown from the tan of the winds; the unruly, fluffy hair clustering around a face and caressing a neck that was essentially womanly in every curve; only, slight as the form seemed, one could find strong points in the depth of chest and solid look of the shoulders; a veteran of the roads would say those same points in a bit of horse-flesh would denote capacity for endurance, and, added to the strong-looking hand and the mockery latent in the level eyes, they completed a personality that she had all her life heard called queer.
— from Told in the Hills: A Novel by Marah Ellis Ryan

Hence the Dramatic, and especially the Tragic Art, of the ancients, annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space and time; while, by their changes, the romantic drama adorns its more varied pictures.
— from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by August Wilhelm von Schlegel

The young plant is, to a great extent, composed of starch; as the plant grows older, a substance is produced which is called diastase .
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 by Various

We have, however, already seen some reason for thinking that the older doctrines led, when carefully examined, to a more enlarged conception of State action than appeared on the surface; and we shall see more fully before we have done that the "positive" conception of the State which we have now reached not only involves no conflict with the true principle of personal liberty, but is necessary to its effective realization.
— from Liberalism by L. T. (Leonard Trelawny) Hobhouse

On a conference, they may agree to strike off the duty of eight cents on salt, and the next year, when we shall better understand the ground on which we stand, the House may be disposed still further to lessen the burden.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16) by United States. Congress

He is called in; he then prorogues Parliament to the tune of “Go to the devil and shake yourself,” and sits down in the easy chair of salary, and tries to think!
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete by Various