I could envisage the scene.
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

But let us suppose that this latter circumstance determined, as it probably often has determined, whether a bee allied to our humble-bees could exist in large numbers in any country; and let us further suppose that the community lived through the winter, and consequently required a store of honey: there can in this case be no doubt that it would be an advantage to our imaginary humble-bee if a slight modification of her instincts led her to make her waxen cells near together, so as to intersect a little; for a wall in common even to two adjoining cells would save some little labour and wax.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

I should quite admit that it is clearly expedient to draw a dividing line of this kind: but it appears to me that there is no simple general method of drawing it; that it can only be drawn by careful utilitarian calculation applied with varying results to the various relations and circumstances of human life.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

The general, for so we shall call him, a Valencian gentleman of rank, gave him his hand and embraced him, saying, "I shall mark this day with a white stone as one of the happiest I can expect to enjoy in my lifetime, since I have seen Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha, pattern and image wherein we see contained and condensed all that is worthy in knight-errantry."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

If I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of individuals, I would oppose them in books which could be weighed and answered, in which I could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings, with their requisite limits and modifications; not in irrecoverable conversation, where however strong the reasons might be, the feelings that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other to envy and discontent.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision.
— from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

It is clearly essential to the interest of this theory that the thought or rule alluded to by Buhler should not need to be expressed in words, for if it is expressed in words it is immediately capable of being dealt with on the lines with which the behaviourists have familiarized us.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

You cannot imagine how hard it is for me to decide, and at this point I cannot explain the source of the difficulty.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

I had never liked Mr. Ablewhite myself, and I induced your mother to let me insert a clause in the will, empowering her executors, in certain events, to consult with me about the appointment of a new guardian.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

It is certainly exploring the facts of sociology, arranging and generalizing them, and deducing laws.
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3, March, 1864 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various

It must be a Christianity, born as at the first in the hearts of the common people, simple, democratic, brotherly; like a tree, its top in the sky but its roots deep in common earth; treating institutions, even the most venerable, as the mere temporary contrivances that they are; with the faith of Jesus in the human heart and in the ultimate triumph of love, and a willingness, like His, to find a throne in a cross.
— from The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age by Salem Goldworth Bland

This subject has been neglected, owing to the temperate climate of California, yet the moisture of the air, and the closeness with which dwellings are built in cities, exclude the rays of the sun and make houses too cold for health and comfort.
— from Femina, A Work for Every Woman by John A. (John Alexander) Miller

I cannot express to you the great comfort I have received ... from the letter which you have sent to my brother Denis Peloquin, who found means to deliver it to one of our brethren who was in a vaulted cell above me, and read it to me aloud, as I could not read it myself, being unable to see anything in my dungeon.
— from Letters of John Calvin, Volume II Compiled from the Original Manuscripts and Edited with Historical Notes by Jean Calvin

I have, however, something in my eye near the beginning which I can easily take out.
— from The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete by John Forster

The cravings of hunger are not one whit easier to bear or less irksome in cultured Europe than in the Steppes of Asia, and the mental agony of the little Jew, despised and mocked by the Christian world, is perhaps harder than the constant fear of being found out by fanatical Mohammedans.
— from The story of my struggles: the memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, Volume 2 by Ármin Vámbéry

It is not our purpose to go further into this question; but Salviati's definition is close enough to Jonson's to indicate that the origin of this term, as of all other critical terms and critical ideas throughout sixteenth-century Europe, must be looked for in the æsthetic literature of Italy.
— from A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance With special reference to the influence of Italy in the formation and development of modern classicism by Joel Elias Spingarn

When we discuss certain so-called “adaptations” to outward circumstance, in the way of form, colour and so forth, we are often apt to use illustrations convincing enough to certain minds but unsatisfying to others—in other words, incapable of demonstration.
— from On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

And it is not improbable that such was the case, to judge from modern Eastern houses, in which the absence of light is considered essential to secure a cool temperature.
— from Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon by Austen Henry Layard

"'E's that easily led by them arbitrators, that's wot I call 'em, that they makes 'im do just [Pg 22] wotever they wants, dirty, lazy set o' tykes.
— from Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles by Herbert George Jenkins