If all fools paced, albeit he be somewhat wry-legged, he would overlay at least a fathom at every rake.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Reality stands complete and ready-made from all eternity, rationalism insists, and the agreement of our ideas with it is that unique unanalyzable virtue in them of which she has already told us.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

My mind had nothing in it but hot vapour, and vapour-filled bubbles frothed and eddied round a vortex of lazy fancy, aimless and unmeaning.
— from My Reminiscences by Rabindranath Tagore

The last time Henry Adams saw Thackeray, before his sudden death at Christmas in 1863, was in entering the house of Sir Henry Holland for an evening reception.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

[‘ forthdo ’] forðearle very much, greatly , Æ. forðearlīce absolutely, entirely , RB 11 19 .
— from A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary For the Use of Students by J. R. Clark (John R. Clark) Hall

Now, this is precisely what ought to be the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced from the comet from an extremely rare ethereal medium pervading the regions of its orbit.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Inglesant is a mere courtly mirror, the prey of his moods and his surroundings, in which beautiful tones of religious feeling are engagingly reflected.
— from The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson

Did he fish round, now in the Princeps, now in the Roman edition, despite the repellent errors that those texts contained, 64 and extract with felicitous accuracy excellent readings that coincided with those of the Parisinus, or did he draw them straight from that source itself?
— from A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger A Study of Six Leaves of an Uncial Manuscript Preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library New York by Edward Kennard Rand

When one writes for an English review or magazine at so many guineas a sheet, the temptation is very great to make one's contribution cover as many sheets as possible.
— from The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: An Index of the Project Gutenberg Editions by Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is the question which a great English Professor of Divinity used to ask his pupils to put in a homely form about every religious scheme and mode of utterance—"will it wash well?"
— from Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John by William Alexander

The yeast in A was in little clusters, the globules of which were collected together, and appeared by their well-defined borders to be ready for an easy revival in contact with air.
— from The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) by Various

On the other hand I am not sure that I can hope to substitute for this particular affair another affair of "terror" which will be expressible in the 50,000; and that for an especial reason.
— from The Letters of Henry James (Vol. I) by Henry James

Rabelais in his immortal work wore a fantastic and extravagant robe, undoubtedly of very obscene texture, and it concealed from stupid eyes, as he doubtless desired that it should, one of the greatest and wisest spirits that ever lived.
— from Impressions and Comments by Havelock Ellis

As a rule he would have merely shouted down the doubt as to Kapiton, told a long yarn about his friend, and eventually retired upstairs to his room.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"That is what I would like to ask a few assorted experts right about now," Hume returned.
— from Star Hunter by Andre Norton