A man, who acknowledges himself to be bound to another, for a certain sum, must certainly know whether it be by his own bond, or that of his father; whether it be of his mere good-will, or for money lent him; and under what conditions, and for what purposes he has bound himself.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

I give myself to the devil, if I did not once keep open house at Paris for all comers six months together.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

The crypto wars ended with a victory for the good guys when the 9th Circuit Appellate Division Court ruled that code was a form of expression protected under the First Amendment -- "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech."
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Not only must we deduct the time spent, not in using life, but preserving it, but if this time is spent in tormenting ourselves it is worse than wasted, it is so much to the bad, and to reckon fairly a corresponding share must be deducted from what remains to us.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When a mortal is so lucky as to be in the good graces of the god Plutus, and is not crackbrained, he is pretty sure to succeed in everything: I had not to search very long before I found a casino suiting my purpose exactly.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

From a child she made me feel that this was the position she expected me to fill; and her faith spurred me on and gave me the power to attain it.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

THE SMITH'S FORGE Up to the hour of his departure from Acol Court, Sir Marmaduke had been convinced that neither his sister-in-law nor Lady Sue had heard of the news which had set the whole of Thanet in commotion.
— from The Nest of the Sparrowhawk: A Romance of the XVIIth Century by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

"One knows these foreign adventurers," concluded Sir Marmaduke with pleasant irony, "with their princely crowns and forlorn causes . . .
— from The Nest of the Sparrowhawk: A Romance of the XVIIth Century by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

Russell, shifting at the last second from a clutch, seeing Mormon charging, swung a vicious uppercut.
— from Rimrock Trail by Dunn, J. Allan, (Joseph Allan)

Breakfast is now ready and after having taken a hearty meal of seal soup and frozen and cooked seal meat the hunter lashes the spear that stands outside of the hut upon the sledge, hangs the harpoon line, some toggles, and his knife over the antlers, and starts for the hunting ground.
— from The Central Eskimo Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-1885, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 399-670 by Franz Boas

There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life, and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine from the royal bounty.
— from The Leading Facts of English History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery

For arrangement, &c., see Morning Prayer , but the various parts of the Service are given each under its own heading.
— from The Church Handy Dictionary by Anonymous

“You have been my friend and confidant since my earliest years and I know you can preserve a secret.
— from The Flying Spy by Camillo De Carlo