We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was and must have been the first temptation: and the coexistence of great intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in this bad and heterogeneous co-ordination we can contemplate the intellect of man more exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than in its proper state of subordination to his own conscience, or to the will of an infinitely superior being.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In a heap of clothing on the floor he found a capote and képi.
— from The King in Yellow by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

525-550,) we find in the Bibliotheque Orientale Tarikh, a catalogue of two or three hundred histories or chronicles of the East, of which not more than three or four are older than Tabari.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs. Gardiner's letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

All such qualities sink to the status of 'habits' between their times of exercise; and similarly truth becomes a habit of certain of our ideas and beliefs in their intervals of rest from their verifying activities.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

; for soon were all her thinking powers swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

It signifies nothing whether a court for this purpose be a committee of council, or a House of Commons, or a House of Lords; the liberty of the subject will be equally subverted by it.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

In this way the child passes six or seven years in the hands of women, the victim of his own caprices or theirs, and after they have taught him all sorts of things, when they have burdened his memory with words he cannot understand, or things which are of no use to him, when nature has been stifled by the passions they have implanted in him, this sham article is sent to a tutor.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

She had been trained in military drilling by an army drill officer and had acquired all his mannerisms, from the way of shouting his orders in such a way that it was next to impossible to understand them, to his merciless habit of calling out by name every one who made the slightest error.
— from The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit; Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos by Hildegard G. Frey

for not the sting Of macerating thongs, nor the slow horror Of crowns of thorny iron maddening the brows, Nor all that else pale hermits have devised To scourge the rebel senses in their shade Of caverned desolation, have the power To smart and goad and lash and mortify Like the great love that binds my ruined heart Relentless, as the insidious ivy binds The shattered bulk of some deserted tower, Enlacing slow and riving with strong hands Of pitiless verdure every seam and jut, Till none may tear it forth and save the tower.
— from Poems by John Hay

We continually see another and even more simple case of atavism, though not generally included under this head, namely, when the son more closely resembles his maternal than his paternal grand-sire in some male attribute, as in any peculiarity in the beard of man, the horns of the bull, the hackles or comb of the cock, or, as in certain diseases necessarily confined to the male sex; for as the mother cannot possess or exhibit such male attributes, the child must inherit them, through her blood, from his maternal grandsire.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — Volume 2 by Charles Darwin

I have taken the book away with me and have lent him instead "The wisdom of the Brahmins" by my dear Rückert, of which, however, one can only take in finger-tips at a time, but every pinch of this snuff, to continue the clumsy simile, freshens the mind and dispels congestions.
— from L'Arrabiata and Other Tales by Paul Heyse

The designation of labour as "property" by our courts only served to tighten the bonds, by obstructing for a time the movement to decrease the tedious and debilitating hours of contact of the human organism with the machine,—a menace to the future of the race, especially in the case of women and children.
— from Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Winston Churchill by Winston Churchill

Faithful to the spirit of his State and his own convictions of justice, he had issued [114] a proclamation to the loyal citizens of the Southwest, declaring that slavery was incompatible with free government, and the aim of the government to be its overthrow.
— from Vermont: A Study of Independence by Rowland Evans Robinson

There are unhappy families; but there at least you find the dignity of tragedy, of fierce hatreds, of clamour, of hot blood running riot in the exultation of excess—Swinburne, you know, Dolores, Faustina, Matisse, and all that.
— from Post-Impressions: An Irresponsible Chronicle by Simeon Strunsky

He replied, that as soon as the English, and their Scottish partisans under Lord Soulis, had surprised the castle, he saw that his only chance of safety was to throw off the bonnet and plaid, and mix amongst the numerous soldiers who had taken possession of the gates.
— from The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

Nor was the practice confined to towns or left exclusively in the hands of corporate or public bodies.
— from The Book of Christmas Descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions, Superstitions, Fun, Feeling, and Festivities of the Christmas Season by Thomas K. Hervey

In the course of his life he will prepare many hundreds of chemicals of exceptional purity; he will write a number of dry and very accurate memoranda, will make some dozen conscientious translations, but he won’t do anything striking.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov