If our folly does not carry us so far as this, we must necessarily admit, that the decision of the mind, which is believed to be free, is not distinguishable from the imagination or memory, and is nothing more than the affirmation, which an idea, by virtue of being an idea, necessarily involves (II. xlix.).
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

‘This old fellow is no different from other people.
— from My Antonia by Willa Cather

PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Now to which class does love belong—to the debatable or to the undisputed class? PHAEDRUS: To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good? SOCRATES: Capital.
— from Phaedrus by Plato

So when we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is not destroyed but concentrated....
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The simple deference inspired by men invested with high social functions is not different in nature from religious respect.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

For indeed neither doth it stand with reason that he should live that is not such.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The more violent the excitement which precedes the War, by so much the nearer will the War approach to its abstract form, so much the more will it be directed to the destruction of the enemy, so much the nearer will the military and political ends coincide, so much the more purely military and less political the War appears to be; but the weaker the motives and the tensions, so much the less will the natural direction of the military element—that is, force—be coincident with the direction which the political element indicates; so much the more must, therefore, the War become diverted from its natural direction, the political object diverge from the aim of an ideal War, and the War appear to become political.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

Now that speaks for itself, Nils, doesn’t it?”
— from Boyhood in Norway: Stories of Boy-Life in the Land of the Midnight Sun by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

He who possesses this fountain is not discouraged by surrounding circumstances, but is often surprised at the deep, sweet gladness that comes without any apparent cause, and even comes most strongly when everything in our condition and circumstances is fitted to fill us with sorrow and depression.
— from Days of Heaven Upon Earth by A. B. (Albert B.) Simpson

“No, that’s a fact; I never did.”
— from The Squirrel-Cage by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

While the railway which connects two northern capitals was being built, two brothers from Ireland, named Doolan, were engaged upon it in the capacity of navvies.
— from Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country by Alexander Smith

‘Well, no, sir,’ said the old fellow, ‘I never drink anything on duty; you see it is one of the regulations and I subscribed them, and, of course, I could not break my word.
— from The Burial of the Guns by Thomas Nelson Page

Over the past decade Cambodia has been slowly recovering from its near destruction by war and political upheaval.
— from The 1991 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

She closed with a cheerful budget of statistics, giving the exact number of needle-women who had starved, gone mad, or committed suicide during the past year; the enormous profits wrung by capitalists from the blood and muscles of their employes; and the alarming increase in the cost of living, which was about to plunge the nation into debt and famine, if not destruction generally.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

They had divided France into nine divisions under provincial synods, and had the appearance to men of that century of a kingdom within a kingdom.
— from A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2) by Thomas M. (Thomas Martin) Lindsay

France is now discussing whether reëducation of one form or another shall be compulsory, as in the Anglo-Belgian hospital.
— from Our Schools in War Time—and After by Arthur D. (Arthur Davis) Dean