The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber; but, as the wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that vestibule.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The use of two instruments of the same colour in octaves, e.g. 2 flutes, 2 clarinets or 2 bassoons etc., if not exactly to be avoided -50- is certainly not to be recommended, as the instruments, playing in different registers will not correspond one with the other.
— from Principles of Orchestration, with Musical Examples Drawn from His Own Works by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

It must be remembered, however, that, whatever might be the importance of such texts, they are not the only source of ethnographic information, not even the most important one.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

All that can be learned of its past history is, that it inhabited a considerable tract so late as the foundation of the present State of Bikaner, the Rathor founders of which expelled, if not extirpated, the Mohil.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

Whereas the wise and calm temperament, being always nearly equable, is not easy to imitate or to appreciate when imitated, especially at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is assembled in a theatre.
— from The Republic by Plato

But if the failure is due to a wrong choice if he has represented a horse as throwing out both his off legs at once, or introduced technical inaccuracies in medicine, for example, or in any other art the error is not essential to the poetry.
— from The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Nature is not enough, enthusiasm is not enough; the artist must fly away into the spheres of the ideal!
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

The syllables constantly sink to seven, and sometimes even to six, or extend themselves, by the admission of trisyllabic feet, to ten, eleven, if not even twelve.
— from The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by George Saintsbury

N.B.—I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an “exception” which permits one to say “wegen den Regen” in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.
— from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Such people do not know that it is as easy, if not easier, to over-catalogue a library as to do it judiciously, and a fearful and wonderful work is often the result.
— from Manual of Library Cataloguing by John Henry Quinn

This, we know by experience, is no easy task.
— from Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 by John G. (John George) Nicolay

Its most original contributor in the domain of metaphysical theology is Professor Austin Phelps, of Andover, whose articles on 'The Instrumentality of the Truth in Regeneration,' and 'Human Responsibility as related to Divine Agency in Conversion,' published within the last two or three years, prove that much of the genius and spirit of Jonathan Edwards still exists in New England theology.
— from British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII January and April, 1871 by Various

How They Went to Europe is no exception to the standard maintained by her other works.
— from The Pansy Magazine, February 1886 by Various

We have seen that wealth wins consideration only when well expended, that ancestry brings no privileges or prerogatives with it, and that an academic education is not equivalent to merely technical erudition.
— from The Americans by Hugo Münsterberg

Ever subtler, ever surer—the Eternal Enigma is no enigma to you."
— from In Search of the Unknown by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers