For time is a mobile thine, and that appears as in a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which belong those words, before and after, has been, or shall be: which at the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is; for it were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that is which is not et being, or that has already ceased to be.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right" can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong—I mean to say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness—at present it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts "He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of super-abundance of will; precisely this shall be called GREATNESS: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full."
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Enter ROSALIND, SILVIUS, and PHEBE ROSALIND.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

From each remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation a faction; and each party thinks that it alone has the true text, and each faction thinks that it possesses the light.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

At last the evil reached such a pitch that the people rose, and with indiscriminate fury destroyed good and bad alike.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

It is true that thus the ultimate origin of the latter may be traced back to the human spirit, a source which then, however, must be taken as a fundamental fact, a primary phaenomenon, underivable from anything else, with the result that the whole explanation remains simply a psychological one.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

Returning, we left the Epping road shortly after passing through that town, and followed a narrow, forest-bordered byway with a few steep hills until we came to Waltham Abbey, a small Essex market town with an important history.
— from British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland by Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler) Murphy

Not Sheridan the day after his marriage, not Byron when he awoke to find himself famous, ever reached such a pinnacle.
— from Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions — Volume 1 by Frank Harris

For apart altogether from the mischief of making every rent settlement a political question, and looking at the matter merely in its economic aspect, land, of all things, is that which is least suited for centralized administration, and yields its best results under the minute concentrated supervision of individual and occupying ownership.
— from Contemporary Socialism by John Rae

She ran the churches, and was chairwoman in all the clubs, and President of the Temperance Union, and manager of every religious, social, and political festival; and her days were full to the brim of just the things she liked to do.
— from The Man Between: An International Romance by Amelia E. Barr

avait ainsi occupé, pour garder seulement son autorité première, et reprendre son ancienne position."
— from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3 by George Elliott Howard

I was dressed like the poor devil of a notary's clerk that I am, and you must admit, my dear father, that most men of fashion would have shrunk from even recognising such a plebeian-looking creature, but Florestan did not even seem to notice my plain apparel.
— from Avarice--Anger: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins by Eugène Sue

I asked one evening rather suddenly, after pondering over the subject and wondering why it was that our family consisted of no one but papa, and mamma, and us children; while other people always had aunts, or uncles, or cousins living with them.
— from A Grandmother's Recollections by Ella Rodman Church