Nevertheless, the second of these measures is the only thing that can possibly counterbalance the first; and it will be found that an elective authority which is not subject to judicial power will, sooner or later, either elude all control or be destroyed.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

“But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen

Reverence is the supreme test of intellectual honesty, but in the whole history of philosophy there is no such thing as
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

And so it is false and tyrannical to say, "He is not strong, therefore I will not esteem him; he is not able, therefore I will not fear him."
— from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

The end of this matter is excusable, if any can be so; but the profit of the augmentation of the public revenue, that served the Roman Senate for a pretence to the foul conclusion I am going to relate, is not sufficient to warrant any such injustice.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

“You have been with your mistress many years, is it not so?” “Ten years, sir.”
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land—into a palace of imagination—into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers—it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life—wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

Secondly, that King whose power is limited, is not superiour to him, or them that have the power to limit it; and he that is not superiour, is not supreme; that is to say not Soveraign.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

There is no such thing as Death, though there be a thing called Change.
— from She by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

“I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to send.”
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Having seen our prosperity in everything to which we had set our hands previous to this, they became discouraged, and ceased their operations; but, suddenly discovering that there was a division in our midst, their fruitful imaginations were aroused to the utmost, to invent new schemes to accomplish our destruction.
— from History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother by Lucy Smith

The policeman, Farrow, refused to arrest the artist, and is now searching the wood with a number of our men——" "Can't they be stopped?" broke in Furneaux, speaking for the first time.
— from The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley by Louis Tracy

74 127 From these culture-centres of the Hamitic stock followed the mighty stream of human progress back along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Cyrene and Carthage, and along its northern shores to Cyprus, Greece, Italy and beyond; while the Accadian and Summerian learning, preserved for all time in the cuneiform writing, made its beneficient influence felt far into India and China, and reacted beneficially on the older wisdom of Egypt, from which it had at first largely drawn its inspiration.
— from Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography by Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton

As Dr. Sewall had been moderator of the meeting of ministers held only two years previously with the hope, and for the purpose of abolishing ordination revelries, it is not strange that the circumstance of the feast being given in his house should cause public comment and criticism.
— from Sabbath in Puritan New England by Alice Morse Earle

Though gifts are offered which are expected to please the higher beings, and though benefits are asked of which the worshipper is urgently in need, such transactions are not necessarily sordid any more than similar applications between human beings, between two friends, or between a parent and a child.
— from History of Religion A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems by Allan Menzies

He possessed, to a great degree, the American adaptability; and it is not surprising that he fell into their way of taking life easily.
— from The Admirable Tinker Child of the World by Edgar Jepson

The dress adopted by the dwellers on the Female Island, though scanty to civilized eyes, is nevertheless suited to their manner of life.
— from Adventures in Southern Seas: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by George Forbes

It is indeed gilded with corn, and fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe.
— from Frondes Agrestes: Readings in 'Modern Painters' by John Ruskin

It never seemed to occur to him to debate or talk for victory.
— from The Letters of William James, Vol. 1 by William James