it will by the same power whereby it already exists always continue to exist, unless it be destroyed by some external cause, this endeavour involves an indefinite time.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

The objects around him, however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

Page 269 , “entertaiments” changed to “entertainments” (in entertainments of that kind) Page 270 , “sumits” changed to “summits” (The summits of Olympus) Page 271 , “Innaseas” changed to “Mnaseas” (his father Mnaseas often came to Athens) Page 272 , “Hesophila” changed to “Herophila” (the sixth was a physician of Herophila), although it is possible “a Herophilean physician”, i.e. a follower of Herophilus, is intended here.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Footnote 31 , “μῖμιοι” changed to “μῖμοι” (μῖμοι σπουδαίων) Footnote 80 , “Euripid” changed to “Euripides” (the Antiope of Euripides) Footnote 82 , “adversariese” changed to “adversaries” (knocked down his adversaries) Footnote 108 , missing word “of” added (which Ovid puts into the mouth of Pythagoras); “Jononis” changed to “Junonis” (templo Junonis in Argis) Footnote 111 , “Challidian” changed to “Chalcidian” (towns of Chalcidian origin) Footnote 119 , “Linæan” changed to “Lenæan” (the second or Lenæan festivals) Footnote 127 , “Valchenær” changed to “Valckenær” (Valckenær conjectures) Footnote 143 , “Trachinæ” changed to “Trachiniæ” (the Trachiniæ of Sophocles) Index entry , “Alemæon” changed to “Alcmæon” Index entry under Ariston, “Scion” changed to “Siren” Index entry , “Arnicereans” changed to “Annicereans” and moved to the correct alphabetical position Index entry under Bias, “Priam” changed to “Priene” Index entry , “Clido” changed to “Chilo” Index entry , “Endoxus” changed to “Eudoxus” Index entry , “Gynosophistæ” changed to “Gymnosophistæ” Index entry under Plato, “Alcinus” changed to “Alcimus” Index entry , “Thesmopheria” changed to “Thesmophoria” Index entry , “Zaleneus” changed to “Zaleucus” Greek ς, when not at the end of a word, has been normalised to σ.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

The kind-hearted Friar inquisitor dismissed the culprits with warnings, and excepting some Spanish political matters in which it took part, this was the nearest that the institution ever came to exercising its functions here.
— from Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot by Austin Craig

Altera autem est urbs 15 Syracusis, cui nomen Achradina est: in qua forum maximum, pulcherrimae porticus, ornatissimum prytaneum , amplissima est curia, templumque egregium Iovis Olympii.
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce

The followers of the established religion intrenched themselves behind a similar fortification of prodigies; invented new modes of sacrifice, of expiation, and of initiation; attempted to revive the credit of their expiring oracles; and listened with eager credulity to every impostor, who flattered their prejudices by a tale of wonders.
— 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

To laugh at them then, or satirize the follies of a being who is never to be allowed to act freely from the light of her own reason, is as absurd as cruel; for that they who are taught blindly to obey authority, will endeavour cunningly to elude it, is most natural and certain.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

A cyclical life or arrested death, a continual motion by little successive explosions, could thus establish itself and could repeat from generation to generation a process not unlike nutrition; only that, while in nutrition the individual form remains and the inner substance is renewed insensibly, in reproduction the form is renewed openly and the inner substance is insensibly continuous.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Twice they showed some sort of front, and the squadrons thought they might find opportunity to charge; but a few rounds from the Maxims effectually checked the enemy, inflicting on each occasion the loss of about twenty killed and wounded.
— from The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan by Winston Churchill

Each cared to excel in the game.
— from The Surprises of Life by Georges Clemenceau

Doubtless in either case the effort is often beyond its power.
— from Per Amica Silentia Lunae by W. B. (William Butler) Yeats

The great Wilberforce, Buxton, and others, who had brought about the abolition of the slave trade in England, continued their exertions in favor of the slave until finally, in 1833, Parliament abolished slavery in the British West Indies, appropriating twenty millions sterling ($100,000,000) as compensation to owners—this because investments in slave property had been made under the sanction of existing law.
— from The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History by Hilary A. (Hilary Abner) Herbert

It is in this month of May that the European condemned to existence in the plains echoes the cry of the psalmist: "Oh that I had wings like a dove!
— from A Bird Calendar for Northern India by Douglas Dewar

At the English cathedral the effect is deepened by the epitaphs of those whose lives were passed in the joint service of England and her loyal child; and our travellers, whatever their want of sympathy with the sentiment, had to own to a certain beauty in that attitude of proud reverence.
— from Their Wedding Journey by William Dean Howells

His speeches and writings do not show that he ever cared to enquire into these questions.
— from Gandhi and Anarchy by Sankaran Nair, C. (Chettur), Sir