Among the various spiritual beings, there is one which should receive our attention first of all because it is the prototype after which the others have been constructed: this is the soul.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

But scientific subject matter is organized with specific reference to the successful conduct of the enterprise of discovery, to knowing as a specialized undertaking.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

Coroll.) imagines any given body, because the human body is affected and disposed by the impressions from an external body, in the same manner as it is affected when certain of its parts are acted on by the said external body; but (by our hypothesis) the body was then so disposed, that the mind imagined two bodies at once; therefore, it will also in the second case imagine two bodies at once, and the mind, when it imagines one, will straightway remember the other.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

The chances are, furthermore, that neither Mr. A. nor Mr. B. has a definite idea of what socialism really is, for as Robert Louis Stevenson says, "Man lives not by bread alone but chiefly by catch words."
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

Just as women make use of teeth of ivory where the natural are wanting, and instead of their true complexion make one of some artificial matter; as they stuff themselves out with cotton to appear plump, and in the sight of every one do paint, patch, and trick up themselves with a false and borrowed beauty; so does science (and even our law itself has, they say, legitimate fictions, whereon it builds the truth of its justice); she gives us in presupposition, and for current pay, things which she herself informs us were invented; for these epicycles, eccentrics, and concentrics , which astrology makes use of to carry on the motions of the stars, she gives us for the best she could invent upon that subject; as also, in all the rest, philosophy presents us not that which really is, or what she really believes, but what she has contrived with the greatest and most plausible likelihood of truth, and the quaintest invention.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

This room had probably been a music room; there was still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen’s adjutant.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

In other words, such rights as every single personality possesses in a modern world do not belong to him by an original ordinance of Nature, but are slowly acquired in the growth and development of the social state.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

A few items of what she related concerning the character of her master may be interesting to the reader— Within the last two years he had sold all his slaves—between thirty and forty in number—having purchased the present ones in that space of time.
— from The Underground Railroad A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-Breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom, As Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author. by William Still

"Each one has finished his work and he examines it and that of others, and in each rises the desire to unite all in one whole," so roads are made from the village of one boy to the castle of another: the boy who has made a cardboard house unites with another who has made miniature ships from nut-shells, the house as a castle crowns the hill, and the ships float in the lake below, while the youngest brings his shepherd and sheep to graze between the mountain and the lake, and all stand and behold with pleasure and satisfaction the result of their hands.
— from The Child under Eight by E. R. (Elsie Riach) Murray

The other, who in point of fact had already secured her affections, was unfortunately deeply involved in, or we should rather say an open leader on, the insurgent side.
— from The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 43, April 24, 1841 by Various

But the mother really does rejoice: she laughs and exults when he can use these syllables about his toy-elephant, she throws the cloak of her love over the defects and mistakes in the little one’s imitations of words, she remembers again and again what his strange sounds stand for, and her eager sympathy transforms the first and most difficult steps on the path of language to the merriest game.
— from Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin by Otto Jespersen

In the evening, yielding, I own, with some reluctance, to a pressing invitation, returned to Keneh to dine with Si Achmet.
— from The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton. Volume II by Barrington, Russell, Mrs.

I prefer that she should, at times, affect ignorance of what she really knows.
— from The Learned Women by Molière

"I often wonder," she remarked, "why people are so selfish."
— from The Guarded Heights by Wadsworth Camp