On the eve of the festival huge bonfires, which should be lighted by striking two flints together, blaze on all the hills and knolls.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

—The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said with enthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

If the employment of these large corps thus detached for secondary objects is more dangerous than the diversions above referred to, it is no less true that they are often highly proper and, it may be, indispensable.
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase, at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

[ 285 ] We have seen how easily the war itself could have been averted by the Bacon Resolution of January, 1899, or some similar resolution frankly declaring the purpose of our government; how here was Senator Bacon at this end of the line pleading with his colleagues to be frank, and to make a declaration in keeping with “the high purpose” for which we had gone to war with Spain, instead of holding on to the Philippines on the idea that they might prove a second Klondike, while justifying such retention by arbitrarily assuming, without any knowledge whatever on the subject, that the Filipinos were incapable of self-government; how, there, at the other end of the line, at Manila, Aguinaldo’s Commissioners, familiar with our Constitution and the history and traditions of our government, were making, substantially, though in more diplomatic language, precisely the same plea, and imploring General Otis’s Commissioners to give them some assurance which would quiet the apprehensions of their people, and calm the fear that the original assurance, “We are going to lick the Spaniards and set you free,” was now about to be ignored because the islands might be profitable to the United States.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

Such principles only enrich the idle at the expense of the industrious.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The masters of St. Thomas's, however, were not quite so ready to fall in with my aspirations to studentship; at the end of the half-year they were of the opinion that I had not given a thought to their institution, and nothing could persuade them that I had earned a title to academic citizenship by any acquisition of knowledge.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

To afford him an early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was arranged that he should call at the hotel at eight o'clock that evening, and that in the meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed of all that had occurred.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

On the eve of the Wall Street panic of 1907, every bank in Goldfield and Tonopah that had existed through the mining boom with the exception of those of Wingfield and Nixon, went to the wall, and every Goldfield broker, with one or two exceptions, went broke.
— from My Adventures with Your Money by George Graham Rice

The eyes of the lady improved much under my treatment, and as she was very communicative and good-natured, we had many long conversations about the manners and customs of our respective countries.
— from Travels in the Interior of Brazil Principally through the northern provinces, and the gold and diamond districts, during the years 1836-1841 by George Gardner

Little can be said about the actual environment of the living fishes of the genus Synaptotylus .
— from A New Genus of Pennsylvanian Fish (Crossopterygii, Coelacanthiformes) from Kansas by Joan Echols

A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

All that it is necessary to know is, whether the general strike contains everything that the socialist doctrine expects of the revolutionary proletariat.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

If we consider the tyrannical measures which have been adopted by the legislatures of the southern states, the conduct of their governors, and the decrees of their courts of justice, we shall be convinced that the entire expulsion of the Indians is the final result to which the efforts of their policy are directed.
— from American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville

These two elements of the religious life are too closely connected with each other to allow of any radical separation.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

It is for this reason that I have thought it necessary to reveal, as minutely as possible, the secret details of this conspiracy of king and priest against the people, and to show how it was baffled at last by the strong self-helping energy of two free nations combined.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

He could do but little at his paper-cutting now, but still he persevered; and his toil was well repaid, too, when he gave his mother the scanty payment which he received at the end of the week, and felt that he had done his best—that he had helped her forward—that he was no longer an idler supported by her sorrow—but that he had braced the burden of labour on to his own shoulders also, weak as they were, and had taken his place, though dying, among the manful workers of the world.
— from Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 by Various

Aladdin tore it open hastily and read: M. Le Duc di Lumière , Hotel St. Gotham : The Board of Directors of the United Mints of North America have secured control of sixty blocks in the heart of the tenement district of New York and will begin at once the erection of thirty first-class model tenement houses, costing two million apiece, each building fronting on all four sides upon a complete city square to be devoted to public parks for the people and playgrounds for the children.
— from Jack and the Check Book by John Kendrick Bangs