Besides, fictitious narratives lead us to imagine the possibility of many events that are impossible; and even the most faithful histories, if they do not wholly misrepresent matters, or exaggerate their importance to render the account of them more worthy of perusal, omit, at least, almost always the meanest and least striking of the attendant circumstances; hence it happens that the remainder does not represent the truth, and that such as regulate their conduct by examples drawn from this source, are apt to fall into the extravagances of the knight-errants of romance, and to entertain projects that exceed their powers.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

She was sick, she would declare, of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole, listening behind every door.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

When, being desired to proceed, the eunuch presses the end of the lingam with his lips closed together, and kisses it as if he were drawing it out, it is called the "outside pressing."
— from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks by Vatsyayana

If we admire the several ingenious contrivances, by which the flowers of the orchis and of many other plants are fertilised through insect agency, can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration by our fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen, in order that a few granules may be wafted by a chance breeze on to the ovules?
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched, and stood exactly parallel to each other.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

The ground, to a considerable distance, after a violent and single shock fell in parts, at once exchanging places; the elevated parts opposed the access of the sea, and parts which had subsided admitted it.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

The three youths, Sörli, Hamdir, and Erp, proceeded to Ermenrich’s kingdom, but ere they met their foes, the two eldest, deeming Erp too young to assist them, taunted him with his small size, and finally slew him.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases there each year.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

83 The sagacious Fritigern had successfully appealed to the passions, as well as to the interest, of his Barbarian allies; and the love of rapine, and the hatred of Rome, seconded, or even prevented, the eloquence of his ambassadors.
— 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

In fine, there was every prospect that, even as the Princess Vera was banished from Boravia, so Fräulein Friedenburg would be expelled from Southam Parva.
— from Tales of two people by Anthony Hope

It is still, and always, this knowledge which comes with fresh exhilarating power to every disconsolate, despairing, fainting soul.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I by Marcus Dods

Roughly speaking there is road or trail from each spot to each pocket, each spot to each spot, each pocket to every other pocket.
— from Stepsons of Light by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

The Germans, with their characteristic tendency to ex plain their every act in terms as realistic and unpleasant as possible, appear to have mauled him in a belated and unexpected embrace, to the horror, I daresay, of the Kaiser, and perhaps to the even greater horror of Nietzsche’s own ghost.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He discovered the lymph-vessels, and maintained, against Plato and others, that the epiglottis prevents the entrance of fluids into the lungs, but he supposed digestion to be produced by mechanical trituration in the stomach, and preferred gymnastics, exercise, diet, and baths to drugs or other therapeutic measures.
— from An Epitome of the History of Medicine by Roswell Park

Would it not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers on plant growth?" "You are right.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

Then the encyclical proceeds to enumerate the errors which all Catholics condemn: Error XVIII.
— from The Church In Politics—Americans Beware! by M. M. (Mangasar Mugurditch) Mangasarian

We may consider, then, that any literary form, the drama, the epic poem, the essay, and so forth, is comparable to a species in natural history.
— from English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century by Leslie Stephen

In any case, the number of friends of mine who died is a sufficiently eloquent proof that extermination was carried out in the same way in all the camps.
— from Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 6 by Various

You are dealing with it entirely from the standpoint of the heart and not of the head, an error common with women, and one that has ever precluded their effective dealing with matters of State.
— from A Prince of Good Fellows by Robert Barr