Nature, we may say, threw the brute form back into her cauldron, to smelt its substance again before pouring it into a rational mould.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

[99] We find it sometimes asserted by persons of enthusiastic and passionate temperament, that there are feelings so exquisitely delightful, that one moment of their rapture is preferable to an eternity of agreeable consciousness of an inferior kind.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

I shall always be prepared; there shall be no flurry, no scolding, no discomfort, but a neat house, a cheerful wife, and a good dinner.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

Though as it is such a big pig I had rather Challow had done it.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Yes, there is something about Burns peculiarly acceptable to the concrete, human points of view.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

For putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, or the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to substance, of which we have no distinct idea, we have the idea of an immaterial spirit; and by putting together the ideas of coherent solid parts, and a power of being moved joined with substance, of which likewise we have no positive idea, we have the idea of matter.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

To be twenty and to be leaning in this palace window wearing a pale blue dinner-gown manifestly suggested a completion of the picture; and all that evening it had been impressing her as inappropriate that the maiden and the castle tower and the very sea itself should all be present, with no possibility of any knight within an altitude of many hundred feet.
— from Romance Island by Zona Gale

Further, the translation being English, it should also be perfectly intelligible in itself without reference to the Greek, the English being really the more lucid and exact of the two languages.
— from Charmides by Plato

It should also be provided that any parent or guardian who facilitates or negligently allows any registered person to have carnal intercourse with another person shall be guilty of an indictable offence.
— from Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders Report of the Committee of Inquiry Appointed by the Hon. Sir Maui Pomare, K.B.E., C.M.G., Minister of Health by New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders

It seemed almost beyond possibility that the serene sky above, and the calm, glinting ocean which rippled so softly at their feet, could be connected with the same world in which inky clouds and snowy foam and roaring billows had but a short time before held high revelry.
— from Charlie to the Rescue by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

It seemed also barely possible that the difficulties of a foreclosure, with the danger under the laws of Pennsylvania of losing the coal properties of the company, might secure better terms for the holders of junior obligations in case they should withhold their assent.
— from Railroad Reorganization by Stuart Daggett

he said, at length; "natur' is sadly abused by [Pg 123] man, when he once gets the mastery.
— from The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

This, at the peril of my head, I say, A blunt plain truth, the sex aspires to sway, You to rule all, while we, like slaves, obey.
— from The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 2 With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by John Dryden