In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square of a city; for then, by its remoteness, it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,—one great life,—one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"No, you shall not," I replied; "in such a point as this your mother's prohibition ought not to have prevented your speaking to me on the subject.
— from Lady Susan by Jane Austen

—We are not familiar with the medicinal uses of this plant in the Philippines, but believe that its sole use is in the soap-making industry; the ash of the plant is rich in soda and potash salts and lye is prepared from it.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. (Trinidad Hermenegildo) Pardo de Tavera

After many offers of employment, which I refused, I sailed at last for America, about April 13th.
— from Rizal's own story of his life by José Rizal

While I remained in speechless astonishment at behavior so alarming, he suddenly leaped to his feet and made a rush at the bell-rope; but just as he reached this, he appeared to have altered his intention, whatever it was, for he dived under a table and immediately re-appeared with a cudgel.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way—its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and thus straightening and shortening itself.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

You have a skiff?" I replied in some astonishment.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

One falls desperately in love, and the more he is slighted the more does his spaniel-like passion increase; another is wedded to wealth rather than to a wife; a third pimps for his own spouse, and is content to be a cuckold so he may wear his horns gilt; a fourth is haunted with a jealousy of his visiting neighbours; another sobs and roars, and plays the child, for the death of a friend or relation; and lest his own tears should not rise high enough to express the torrent of his grief, he hires other mourners to accompany the corpse to the grave, and sing its requiem in sighs and lamentations; another hypocritically weeps at the funeral of one whose death at heart he rejoices for; here a gluttonous cormorant, whatever he can scrape up, thrusts all into his guts to pacify the cryings of a hungry stomach; there a lazy wretch sits yawning and stretching, and thinks nothing so desirable as sleep and idleness; some are extremely industrious in other men's business, and sottishly neglectful of their own; some think themselves rich because their credit is great, though they can never pay, till they break, and compound for their debts; one is so covetous that he lives poor to die rich; one for a little uncertain gain will venture to cross the roughest seas, and expose his life for the purchase of a livelihood; another will depend on the plunders of war, rather than on the honest gains of peace; some will close with and humour such warm old blades as have a good estate, and no children of their own to bestow it upon; others practice the same art of wheedling upon good old women, that have hoarded and coffered up more bags than they know how to dispose of; both of these sly flatteries make fine sport for the gods, when they are beat at their own weapons, and (as oft happens) are gulled by those very persons they intended to make a prey of.
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

If you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return—” “You will promise me in return?” inquired Syme, as the other paused.
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

John R. Bartlett, late of the United States Boundary Commission, all agree in the statement that the Territory has immense resources in silver and copper.
— from Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona by Sylvester Mowry

Thus we may receive the work intellectually, recognizing its subject, and turning the artist's emotion into our thought and translating it from his medium of color and form or sound into our own medium of words.
— from The Gate of Appreciation: Studies in the Relation of Art to Life by Carleton Eldredge Noyes

He immediately relapsed into silence, and Bertha's brain began to revolve the circumstances in which she was placed, and to inquire whether there was no chance of her being able to extract good out of evil, and to turn her captivity to some advantage.
— from The Castle of Ehrenstein Its Lords Spiritual and Temporal; Its Inhabitants Earthly and Unearthly by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

As arguments were adduced that the British element had proved itself unassimilable and irreconcilable, its retention in South Africa would necessitate continuous provisions to keep it in a state of subjection.
— from Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked by C. H. Thomas

After staring at this phantom in return, in silent awe, Mr Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for a place of hiding, where he might lie sheltered from the consequences of his crime.
— from Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

[29] The doctrine of the ascension, when rightly understood, presents then no difficulties from a scientific point of view, but is rather in strictest accordance with the highest and subtlest forms of modern thought.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1 by George Thomas Stokes

I read its successor and its successor.
— from Confessions of a Young Man by George Moore

Now, with respect to the so-called arguments which he ventures to put forward in proof that the sermon is Romish, I shall answer them, together with all his other arguments, in the latter portion of this reply; here I do but draw the attention of the reader, as I have said already, to the phenomenon itself, which he exhibits, of an unclouded confidence that the sermon is the writing of a virtual member of the Roman communion, and I do so because it has made a great impression on my own mind, and has suggested to me the course that I shall pursue in my answer to him.
— from Apologia pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman

In the previously-mentioned work on which I was at that time engaged [ Menschliches Allzumenschliches —“Things Human, Things all too Human”], I referred, in season and out of season, to the propositions of that book, not refuting them—what have I to do with refutations?—but, as befits a positive spirit, to substitute the more probable for the improbable, and at times one error for another’ ( Zur Genealogie der Moral , p. 7).
— from Degeneration by Max Simon Nordau