The soul, I said, being, as is now proven, immortal, must be the fairest of compositions and cannot be compounded of many elements?
— from The Republic by Plato

With increasing impatience Kennon listened to the cadenced flow of complaint and condemnation, occasionally inserting a “Yes, sir” or “Sorry, sir” or “No, sir” as the words flowed around him.
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone

Ascending the hill, we soon emerged into a broad road leading into Columbia, between old fields of corn and cotton, and, entering the city, we found seemingly all its population, white and black, in the streets.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

This plan, or, if the reader be pleased to so term it, this absence of plan, avoids the dangers of stagnation or dead level, and, though encouraging individual initiative, permits of the fullest co-operation, while the increased rents which follow from this form of competition are common or municipal property, and by far the larger part of them are expended in permanent improvements.
— from Garden Cities of To-Morrow Being the Second Edition of "To-Morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform" by Howard, Ebenezer, Sir

When fear or bravery precipitates the decision, there is nothing objective intervening between them for our consideration, and consequently nothing by which sagacity and calculation might have met the probable result.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

The subsidies were for five years and took the form of cash and coffee.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

The Judge was full of congratulations and curiosity.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent—that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A feeling of calm and content stole over me.
— from Love Among the Chickens by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

Fifty millions withdrawn in a short time from its usual place of deposit is quite sufficient to make the whole volume of coin disappear from ordinary circulation as completely as if it had never existed.
— from Betsy Gaskins (Dimicrat), Wife of Jobe Gaskins (Republican) Or, Uncle Tom's Cabin Up to Date by W. I. (William I.) Hood

In the barge fleet, Oscar Chester, as coxswain of the senior boat, as the Gildrock was ranked, was the acting commodore.
— from Stem to Stern; or, building the boat by Oliver Optic

He tells us that he experimented with seventy diamonds in presence of many witnesses, employing a number of iron bars and pieces of wire, manipulating them with the greatest care while they floated on corks; and concludes his long and exhaustive research by plaintively saying: "Yet never was it granted me to see the effect mentioned by Porta."
— from Makers of Electricity by Brother Potamian

Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, a complete wreck, and myself not very brilliant.
— from Vailima Letters Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, November 1890-October 1894 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Remember, you are full of cheese and crackers now,” answered Rector.
— from The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska; Or, The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass by Frank Gee Patchin

His place was full of casts and classic fragments, and when he had set his pupils to copying these he considered his day's work done.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 04 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters by Elbert Hubbard

But the clear course of the lovely Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with gravelly shallows, and guards Loch Lomond from the white-winged roamers that from all seas come crowding into the Firth of Clyde, and carry their streaming flags above the woods of Ardgowan.
— from Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1 by John Wilson