For His miracles being convincing, they should have been quite sure of these supposed contradictions of His teaching to Scripture; and this obscurity did not excuse, but blinded them.
— from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship.
— from Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson

It is he who in an encounter with your Eminence’s Guards decided the victory in favor of the king’s Musketeers; it is he who gave three desperate wounds to de Wardes, your emissary, and who caused the affair of the diamond studs to fail; it is he who, knowing it was I who had Madame Bonacieux carried off, has sworn my death.”
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

“I don’t think you need break your heart over Gania,” said the prince; “for if what you say is true, he must be considered dangerous in the Epanchin household, and if so, certain hopes of his must have been encouraged.”
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Although a king himself may be called a prince, from his principality in governing, and a leader, because he leads the army, but it does not follow that all who are princes and leaders may also be called kings, as that Aristobulus was.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

/ How many then would cover that stand bare; / How many be commanded that command; / How much low peasantry would then be glean'd / From the true seed of honour; and how much honour, / Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times, / To be new-varnish'd.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

They had only to be firm and he knew that he must be conquered.
— from The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope

Thus, according to the younger Edwards himself, the elder Edwards has, in his definition of motive, included every conceivable cause of volition; and yet, when Dr. West objects that he makes motive the producing cause of volition, the very same writer replies that he has done no such thing: that he has “very particularly explained in what sense he uses the word cause” when applied to motive, and that he means “by cause , no other than occasion, reason, or previous circumstance necessary for volition ; and that in this Dr. West entirely agrees with him,” p. 65.
— from An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

He micht be coming here to Helvoet; he micht come here the morn, he michtna come for a twalmonth; I would wonder at naething—or just at the ae thing, and that’s if he was to pay me my siller.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 11 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Budyas the successor of Spatembas may have been the Budha of the Indians who is with them the father of Pururavas, the kindler of the triple fire of sacrifice: and Pururavas himself may be concealed under the Kradeuas of the manuscripts, [Pg 74] which is possibly Prareuas, the Grecised form of the Indian name.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6) by Max Duncker

Since writing to you to-day, at this late hour my Belgian colleague Baron Nothomb has called to tell me that he had a long conversation with Moltke yesterday fully confirming what is said in my despatch.
— from Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy, Vol. 2 of 2 by Newton, Thomas Wodehouse Legh, Baron

For a long time they are amazed; and Pyrrha is the first by her words to break the silence, and then refuses to obey the commands of the Goddess; and begs her, with trembling lips, to grant her pardon, and dreads to offend the shades of her mother by casting her bones.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

He must be careful to sever all the green from the ripe part, inasmuch as the juice of the former sours the molasses, and renders it unsalable.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

Denounced by thieves, hated by hypocrites, mobbed by cowards, slandered by priests, shunned by politicians, abhorred by the seekers of office,—these men "of whom the world was not worthy," in spite of all opposition, in spite of poverty and want, conquered innumerable obstacles, never faltering for one moment, never dismayed—accepting defeat with a smile born of infinite hope—knowing that they were right—insisted and persisted until every chain was broken, until slave-pens became schoolhouses, and three millions of slaves became free men, women, and children.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

No, indeed, the historian may be careless, he may be indolent, he may always intend and never execute, but he is neither a monster nor a statue; he has a memory, a conscience, a heart, and that heart is sincerely devoted to Lady S.
— from Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794) Volume 2 (of 2) by Edward Gibbon

The effect of these books and of the exposure so honorably made by Col. Stone on our own young mind, and undoubtedly upon the minds of thousands besides, to open our eyes to the falsehood and dishonesty of the gross misrepresentations of the Catholic religion and its professors which have been rife among Protestants, and are still prevalent among the less enlightened of them, both gentle and simple.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875 by Various