For according to this the copulation is a mere formality, à propos of which a supreme intelligent Cause of the world has concluded to form a fruit immediately by his hand, and only to leave to the mother its development and nourishment.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

“There’s one thing ... that old love affair of Varenka’s,” she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Pao-yü had, in his own mind, been under the impression that he had attained perception, but when he was unawares and all of a sudden subjected to this question by Tai-yü, he soon found it beyond his power to give any ready answer.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private actions open to the world.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it.
— from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

I have not yet said, if after long expectation, much expense, travel, earnest suit of ourselves and friends, we obtain a small benefice at last; our misery begins afresh, we are suddenly encountered with the flesh, world, and devil, with a new onset; we change a quiet life for an ocean of troubles, we come to a ruinous house, which before it be habitable, must be necessarily to our great damage repaired; we are compelled to sue for dilapidations, or else sued ourselves, and scarce yet settled, we are called upon for our predecessor's arrearages; first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, are instantly to be paid, benevolence, procurations, &c., and which is most to be feared, we light upon a cracked title, as it befell Clenard of Brabant, for his rectory, and charge of his Beginae ; he was no sooner inducted, but instantly sued, cepimusque [2087] (saith he) strenue litigare, et implacabili bello confligere : at length after ten years' suit, as long as Troy's siege, when he had tired himself, and spent his money, he was fain to leave all for quietness' sake, and give it up to his adversary.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

A lockjaw that bends a man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, [143] must have its outlet by human suffering.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

And for all that he was driving through a city of stone to immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what was incessantly before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray, where, at four in the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed, thanks to the breeze that was wafted across the fields from Méséglise, he could enjoy the fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an arbour of hornbeams in the garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with forget-me-not and iris; and where, when he sat down to dinner, trained and twined by the gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about his table currant-bush and rose.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

ide, the oakum-pickers, with venerable gestures, sought to restrain the blacks, who, at the sight of three gurried water-casks in its bottom, and a pile of wilted pumpkins in its bow, hung over the bulwarks in disorderly raptures.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

But, then, he had such a good-natured, fat face, such a mischievous, mirth-loving smile, and such a merry, roguish expression in those small, jet-black, glittering eyes, that you suffered yourself to be taken in by him, without offering the least resistance to his impositions.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

An owl it unquestionably is, but how widely does it differ from every other member of its family."
— from Austral English A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia by Edward Ellis Morris

It beats hangin' at that."
— from Wolves of the Sea Being a Tale of the Colonies from the Manuscript of One Geoffry Carlyle, Seaman, Narrating Certain Strange Adventures Which Befell Him Aboard the Pirate Craft "Namur" by Randall Parrish

Ye shall make a special prayer for your fathers’ souls and for your mothers’ souls, godfathers’ souls and [Pg 211] godmothers’ souls, brothers’ souls and sisters’ souls, and for all your elders’ souls, and for all the souls that you and I be bound to pray for, and specially for all the souls whose bones are buried in this church or in this churchyard or in any other holy place; and in especial for all the souls that bide the great mercy of Almighty God in the bitter pains of Purgatory, that God for His great mercy release them of their pain if it be His blessed will.
— from Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England by Edward Lewes Cutts

Now, in regard to what he says, that Trumbull shifts the issue, that he shifts his ground,—and I believe he uses the term that, "it being proven false, he has changed ground," I call upon all of you, when you come to examine that portion of Trumbull's speech (for it will make a part of mine), to examine whether Trumbull has shifted his ground or not.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 4: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Abraham Lincoln

"I'll stop him, Polly," he said cheerily, and he dashed in between her and the bull, who, not liking this interference, now shook his head angrily.
— from The Adventures of Joel Pepper by Margaret Sidney

Irritated by his boldness and success in attacking their superstition, and sensible that it would be vain, and even dangerous, to prefer an accusation against him on that ground, they watched for an opportunity of catching at something in his discourses or behaviour, which they might improve to his disadvantage.
— from Life of John Knox, Fifth Edition, Vol. 1 of 2 Containing Illustrations of the History of the Reformation in Scotland by Thomas M'Crie

It was the hour when the city, like another Cinderella, steps out of the drab and homespun of the day into the beaded fairy raiment of the twilight; when through the hard and hazy battlements something soft and gentle tempers the air; when the clamor of strident sounds lingers faintly in the drowsy distance and polyglot ugliness masks itself behind half-shadows and fleeting forms.
— from The Wasted Generation by Owen Johnson

Meanwhile, the popular feeling in favour of the royalists is being heightened and extended by the constant influx of French refugees.
— from The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney