Don Quixote said that even if it reached to the bottomless pit he meant to see where it went to; so they bought about a hundred fathoms of rope, and next day at two in the afternoon they arrived at the cave, the mouth of which is spacious and wide, but full of thorn and wild-fig bushes and brambles and briars, so thick and matted that they completely close it up and cover it over.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Section I. Of the Ultimate End of the Pure Use of Reason There exists in the faculty of reason a natural desire to venture beyond the field of experience, to attempt to reach the utmost bounds of all cognition by the help of ideas alone, and not to rest satisfied until it has fulfilled its course and raised the sum of its cognitions into a self-subsistent systematic whole.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

The jealousies of the king, become too habitual to be discarded, had in fact only received a new direction from the birth of his son: his mind was perpetually haunted with the dread of leaving him, a defenceless minor, in the hands of contending parties in religion, and of a formidable and factious nobility; and for the sake of obviating the distant and contingent evils which he apprehended from this source, he showed himself ready to pour forth whole rivers of the best blood of England.
— from Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth by Lucy Aikin

In a short time the sound of steps echoed along the corridor, and Julia assumed her sweetest smiles; for our readers are no doubt aware that, under such circumstances, namely, when one is in love, even the sound of a boot-heel may be recognised.
— from Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature, vol. 1 by Mór Jókai

Tired of singing such stuff, Tamburini introduced an air from the Inganno Felice of Rossini, and never did a base voice give so splendid a specimen of ease, taste, and execution; the audience, without considering the fatigue of the singer, encored it; Tamburini repeated it with more spirit than at first, and then the audience took their hats and left the rest of Chiara di Rosenberg to be performed to empty benches.
— from The Harmonicon. Part the First by Various

225 The Festival of Reason at Nôtre Dame was an act not of the Convention but of the Commune of Paris and the Department; the Convention had no part in promoting it; half the members stayed away when invited to attend; and there was no Goddess of Reason in the ceremony, but only a Goddess of Liberty, represented by an actress who cannot even be identified.
— from A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

Many of the men who would be included in this form of relief are now dependent upon public aid, and it does not, in my judgment, consist with the national honor that they shall continue to subsist upon the local relief given indiscriminately to paupers instead of upon the special and generous provision of the nation they served so gallantly and unselfishly.
— from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents Volume 9, part 1: Benjamin Harrison by Benjamin Harrison

The festivals of Rome are not disturbed at the sight of tombs.
— from Corinne; Or, Italy. Volume 1 (of 2) by Madame de (Anne-Louise-Germaine) Staël

A BABY'S GRAVE Sophy Chantrey had strayed absently down to the churchyard in one of those fits of restlessness and nervous despondency which made it impossible to her to remain in the overcrowded rooms of Bolton Villa or in the trim flower-garden surrounding it.
— from Brought Home by Hesba Stretton

Always on the alert, he is full of resources, and no difficulties daunt him.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various