Now, if I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in the form of a universal law, it would destroy itself.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

At times he thought of those brave French gentlemen who had appeared to him from a distance of a hundred leagues fabulous and unreal, like the forms that appear in dreams.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

So, pressing his fist against his bent brow, he ran to the meadows, where, below, the ponds glittered, and took his stand above the one with marshy banks; in its greenish depths he buried his greedy gaze and drew into his breast with joy the swampy odours, and opened his lips to them; for suicide, like all wild passions, springs from the imagination: in the giddy whirling [pg 214] of his brain he felt an unspeakable longing to drown himself in the swamp.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

From this summit he could be seen as a minute speck, following an unerring line towards his old home.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

"I fear a unicorn less than I did two Giants!
— from Grimm's Fairy Stories by Wilhelm Grimm

And could I, furthermore, confront the morning breeze, the evening moon, the willows by the steps and the flowers in the courtyard, methinks these would moisten to a greater degree my mortal pen with ink; but though I lack culture and erudition, what harm is there, however, in employing fiction and unrecondite language to give utterance to the merits of these characters?
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

The Colonel was silent for an unusually long time.
— from The Avenger by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

The winter remained mild for an unusually long time—he could have escaped; but instead he remained in Moscow, making impossible plans, at a loss.
— from The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Amongst almost the last words that Livingstone wrote, I find an unfinished letter to myself, in which he gives me very clear and explicit directions concerning the geographical notes he had previously sent home, and I am but carrying out the sacred duty which is attached to a last wish when I call attention to the fact, that he particularly desired in this letter that no positions gathered from his observations for latitude and longitude, nor for the levels of the Lakes, &c., should be considered correct till Sir Thomas Maclear had examined them .
— from The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 by David Livingstone

But the movement of the Veiled Lady was graceful, free, and unembarrassed, like that of a person accustomed to be the spectacle of thousands; or, possibly, a blindfold prisoner within the sphere with which this dark earthly magician had surrounded her, she was wholly unconscious of being the central object to all those straining eyes.
— from The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass; but civilisation is coming and coming; you and your much-loved waste lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner or later brought down to a state of mere usefulness; the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel as a colt from grass, to be trained and tried, and matched and run.
— from Eothen; Or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East by Alexander William Kinglake

This had a secret chamber, or well, made in the thickness of the walls, accessible from an upper loft through a trap-door.
— from Old Country Life by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

Impatient at such incoherence and nervous garrulousness, Miss Witherspoon yet understood that something of vital importance was in the letter which Miss Patty waved back and forth, and unable longer to maintain her indifference she touched the old lady on the arm.
— from The Shadow by Mary White Ovington

The Germans came on, as they always did, in immense columns, literally jammed together, so that their men were held under fire an unnecessarily long time.
— from In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland by John Morse

The floors are undulating, like the waves of the sea.
— from Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat In the U. S. Sloop-of-war Peacock, David Geisinger, Commander, During the Years 1832-3-4 by Edmund Roberts