According to the nature and number of each being's enemies has its own special mechanism been evolved, distinguishing it from its fellows and enabling it to get a living in its particular environment.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

And he who desires to understand Shakespeare truly must understand the relations in which Shakespeare stood to the Renaissance and the Reformation, to the age of Elizabeth and the age of James; he must be familiar with the history of the struggle for supremacy between the old classical forms and the new spirit of romance, between the school of Sidney, and Daniel, and Johnson, and the school of Marlowe and Marlowe’s greater son; he must know the materials that were at Shakespeare’s disposal, and the method in which he used them, and the conditions of theatric presentation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, their limitations and their opportunities for freedom, and the literary criticism of Shakespeare’s day, its aims and modes and canons; he must study the English language in its progress, and blank or rhymed verse in its various developments; he must study the Greek drama, and the connection between the art of the creator of the Agamemnon and the art of the creator of Macbeth; in a word, he must be able to bind Elizabethan London to the Athens of Pericles, and to learn Shakespeare’s true position in the history of European drama and the drama of the world.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, said will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Here Lord Anglesey was with us, and in talk about the late difference between the two Houses, do tell us that he thinks the House of Lords may be in an error, at least, it is possible they may, in this matter of Skinner; and he doubts they may, and did declare his judgement in the House of Lords against their proceedings therein, he having hindered 100 originall causes being brought into their House, notwithstanding that he was put upon defending their proceedings: but that he is confident that the House of Commons are in the wrong, in the method they take to remedy an error of the Lords, for no vote of theirs can do it; but, in all like cases, the Commons have done it by petition to the King, sent up to the Lords, and by them agreed to, and so redressed, as they did in the Petition of Right.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or melancholy, she lived in its presence.
— from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete by Emily Dickinson

Three hundred and six soldiers, all patricians, all of the one stock, not one of whom the senate would reject as a leader in its palmiest days, proceeded on their march, menacing destruction to the Veientian state by the prowess of a single family.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper place.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

It is not surprising to find that the value in the idea of social efficiency resides largely in its protest against the points at which the doctrine of natural development went astray; while its misuse comes when it is employed to slur over the truth in that conception.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

Now that medical attendance was no longer indispensable, I played the first move in the game by asserting myself against the doctor.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Institutional libraries interested in publications exchange may obtain this series by addressing the Exchange Librarian, University of Kansas Library, Lawrence, Kansas.
— from Life History and Ecology of the Five-Lined Skink, Eumeces fasciatus by Henry S. (Henry Sheldon) Fitch

It merely shows that it did well enough for this very brief step—brief indeed compared with the real problems of Astronomy, for which latter it is probably quite inadequate.
— from Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays by Edward Carpenter

The tireless efforts, on the one side, of the Holy Office to extend its authority and increase its emoluments caused it constantly to violate compacts, while the jealousy of the civil magistracy on the other and its natural desire to repel intrusion rendered it prompt to use whatever means lay in its power.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1 by Henry Charles Lea

Though the subject might be dwelt on at very great length, it is perhaps already apparent that the gods of the Vedic poetry are not only potent over regions of the natural world, but are also conceived of, at times, as being powers with ethical tendencies and punishers of mortal guilt.
— from Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Andrew Lang

Wherever obstacles to the progress of the ice lay in its path, there was a chance that these obstacles, rising somewhat into the [Pg 98] lower part of the ice, would constitute barriers against which debris in the lower part of the ice would lodge.
— from The Geography of the Region about Devil's Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin With Some Notes on Its Surface Geology by Rollin D. Salisbury

Their sentiment is not love, it is passion.
— from The Jew by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

Among the latter it is permissible to mention Mr. Junius Henri Browne, of New York, and the late Col. Albert S. Evans, of San Francisco.
— from The Underground World: A mirror of life below the surface by Thomas Wallace Knox

‘Tis in everything else the same; a violent imagination hath seized me: I find it a nearer way to change than to subdue it: I depute, if not one contrary, yet another at least, in its place.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

It comes through many gardens and orchards, now white with apple blossom; and when it leaves the bridge it burrows underground for some little distance, and reappears at the foot of the cottage gardens, to lose itself in pleasant meandering through more flowery meadows, till it passes out of the ken of Heigham folks, and out of our story's picture.
— from The Water-Finders by Judith Vandeleur