Thus it is therefore with the habits of perfected Self-Mastery and Courage and the rest of the Virtues: for the man who flies from and fears all things, and never stands up against anything, comes to be a coward; and he who fears nothing, but goes at everything, comes to be rash.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

He put it on his own plate, saying: —Well, you can’t say but you were asked.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

His wife, the Flaminica, also had her own prohibitions: she was not allowed to ascend more than three steps on a certain kind of stairs and on certain holidays she could not comb her hair; the leather for her shoes could not be taken from any animal that had died a natural death but only from one that had been slaughtered or sacrificed; when she heard thunder she was unclean until she had made an expiatory sacrifice
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so valuable a slave.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

“He says that it’s roofless,” replied the secretary, “and that having purchased out of his own pocket some maps and pictures, he doesn’t want to expose them to the weather.”
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal

But I have also shewed formerly, that before the Institution of Common-wealth, every man had a right to every thing, and to do whatsoever he thought necessary to his own preservation; subduing, hurting, or killing any man in order thereunto.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Nor, as I have said, does it seem to me that any other method has ever been applied or sought by the common sense of mankind, for regulating the pursuit of what our older moralists called ‘Natural Good,’— i.e. of all that is intrinsically desirable except Virtue or Morality, within the limits fixed by the latter; the Utilitarian here only performs somewhat more consistently and systematically than ordinary men the reasoning processes which are commonly admitted to be appropriate to the questions that this pursuit raises.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

And though the scribes (evidently ashamed of the early worship they had outlived) protest somewhat vehemently more than once, “There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when Jahweh made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt,” yet this much at least even they admit—that the object or objects concealed in the ark consisted of a sculptured stone or stones; and that to dance or sing before this stone or these stones was equivalent to dancing or singing before the face of Jahweh.
— from The Evolution of the Idea of God: An Inquiry Into the Origins of Religions by Grant Allen

It was, she knew, contrary to foreign custom for her to receive him in such a manner; but, strong in the integrity of her own purpose, she felt that foreign customs concerned her very little.
— from Fairy Gold by Christian Reid

Henry expressed profound regret that his own means were so limited, and his own position so dangerous, as to make it difficult for him to manifest in broad daylight the full affection which he bore the Provinces.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce, 1584-85a by John Lothrop Motley

To compass this end he brought into play all the means suggested by his exceptional position before the law and by his own peculiar social constitution.
— from Jewish History : An Essay in the Philosophy of History by Simon Dubnow

Now that he had heard her voice, the terrors of his interview were dispersed, and he had only plain sadness to encounter.
— from Rhoda Fleming — Complete by George Meredith

Led captain; an humble dependant in a great family, who for a precarious subsistence, and distant hopes of preferment, suffers every kind of indignity, and is the butt of every species of joke or ill-humour.
— from 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose

[2] Wood then contributes a few of his own pungent stories about the Major, which have no counterparts in Settle's narrative.
— from The Notorious Impostor (1692); Diego Redivivus (1692) by Elkanah Settle