The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual life, and may often be at variance with them.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

As has been said already, it is not every repugnancy that makes a contract void, and it is not every failure in the terms of the counter undertaking that makes it voidable.
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

In fact, there is nothing for it to do but fall; but it is not every river that can carve out in its rage such wonderful stairways as this,—seething and foaming and roaring and leaping through its narrow and narrowing channel, with all the turbulence of its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of Time is on its throat, silent, mighty, irresistible. Montmorency,—Montmorenci,—sweet and storied name!
— from Gala-Days by Gail Hamilton

Thus many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm, incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,—show me a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
— from Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

"It is no excuse," repeated the Cure sternly.
— from The Lane That Had No Turning, Volume 2 by Gilbert Parker

Even if this scheme would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no extensive reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted.
— from The High School Failures A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or Commercial High School Subjects by Francis Paul OBrien

It seems to me that both these theories are wrong; but that it is true that a commune to exist harmoniously, must be composed of persons who are of one mind upon some question which to them shall appear so important as to take the place of a religion, if it is not essentially religions; though it need not be fanatically held.
— from The Communistic Societies of the United States From Personal Visit and Observation by Charles Nordhoff

It is, I think, worthy of consideration, whether, since no wager is binding without a possibility of loss on each side, it is not equally reasonable, that no contract should be valid without reciprocal stipulations; but in this case, and others of the same kind, what is stipulated on his side to whom the bond is given?
— from The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 04 The Adventurer; The Idler by Samuel Johnson

"Is it not extraordinary," returned the Genoese, "that men should consort together in good and evil, bleed for each other, love each other, do all acts of kindness to each other, as thou and I have done, Melchior, nay, be in the last extremity, and feel more agony for the friend than for one's self, and yet entertain such opinions of their respective creeds, as to fancy the unbeliever in the devil's claws all this time, and to entertain a latent distrust that the very soul which, in all other matters, is deemed so noble and excellent, is to be everlastingly damned for the want of certain opinions and formalities that we ourselves have been taught to think essential?" "To tell thee the truth," returned the Swiss, rubbing his forehead like a man who wished to brighten up his ideas, as one would brighten old silver, by friction; "this subject, as thou well knowest, is not my strong side.
— from The Headsman; Or, The Abbaye des Vignerons by James Fenimore Cooper

If law then be in its own nature, as the antinomians tell us, destructive of spontaneity and progress, if it necessarily externalises religion, then there would have been as little room for the religion of the prophets before Deuteronomy as after it.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy by Andrew Harper