“Others, to show their learning, or often from the prejudices of a school education, where they hear of nothing else, are always talking of the ancients, as something more than men, and of the moderns, as something less.
— from The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards Society by Cecil B. Hartley

I found employment, the third day after my arrival in New Bedford, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil for the New York market.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects superior to the body, and that even in life what makes each one of us to be what we are is only the soul; and that the body follows us about in the likeness of each of us, and therefore, when we are dead, the bodies of the dead are quite rightly said to be our shades or images; for the true and immortal being of each one of us which is called the soul goes on her way to other Gods, before them to give an account—which is an inspiring hope to the good, but very terrible to the bad, as the laws of our fathers tell us; and they also say that not much can be done in the way of helping a man after he is dead.
— from Laws by Plato

They can jump to the next square (if vacant) or leap over one frog to the next square beyond (if vacant), just as we move in the game of draughts, and can go backwards or forwards at pleasure.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

What availed him the friendship of Scipio, of Laelius, or of Furius, three of the most affluent nobles of that age?
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

179.—We sometimes complain of the levity of our friends to justify our own by anticipation.
— from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

As in each fully stocked country natural selection necessarily acts by the selected form having some advantage in the struggle for life over other forms, there will be a constant tendency in the improved descendants of any one species to supplant and exterminate in each stage of descent their predecessors and their original progenitor.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

It appears, then, that both he who commands and he who obeys should each of them learn their separate business: but that the citizen should be master of and take part in both these, as any one may easily perceive; in a family government there is no occasion for the master to know how to perform the necessary offices, but rather to enjoy the labour of others; for to do the other is a servile part.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

And there shall be ties which no distance can sever, Thou land of our fathers, the dauntless and free; Tho' the charms of each change smile around me, yet never Shall the sigh be inconstant that's hallow'd to thee.
— from The Newcastle Song Book; or, Tyne-Side Songster Being a Collection of Comic and Satirical Songs, Descriptive of Eccentric Characters, and the Manners and Customs of a Portion of the Labouring Population of Newcastle and the Neighbourhood by Various

Owing to the limitations of our faculties , the complete attainment of this supreme end is conceivable by us only on the assumption of a future life wherein perfect worthiness may be attained, and of an omnipotent Divine Being who will apportion happiness in accordance with merit.
— from A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' by Norman Kemp Smith

From the account that he gives of the cupping, vomiting and purging that he underwent, under the care of good Doctor Fothergill, there would seem to have been no lack of opportunity for the escape of the disease, which, judging by the amount of bark that he took in substance and infusion, was probably some form of malarial fever.
— from Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2) A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings by Wiliam Cabell Bruce

Now when Aristotle says this of Socrates, he is recording the institution of a method, which might be applied in the way just indicated, to natural objects, to such a substance as carbon, or to such natural processes as heat or motion; but which, by Socrates himself, as by Plato after him, was applied almost exclusively to moral phenomena, to the generalisation of aesthetic, political, ethical ideas, of the laws of operation (for the essence of every true conception, or definition, or idea, is a law of operation) of the feelings and the will.
— from Plato and Platonism by Walter Pater

The great ladies of old flaunted their love-affairs, with newspapers and advertisements; in these days the lady has her little passion neatly ruled like a sheet of music with its crotchets and quavers and minims, its rests, its pauses, its sharps to sign the key.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

“Like our old friend the elephant and the pin that we were told about in childhood?” “Exactly.
— from Lucinda by Anthony Hope

—Let us suppose that we are to teach the lesson of obedience from the story of Adam and Eve to children of early primary age.
— from How to Teach Religion Principles and Methods by George Herbert Betts

The architect who designates the number and location of outlets for the lighting sources, and specifies the candle-power of the lamps, knows nothing of the ultimate decoration of the house.
— from Color Value by C. R. (Chandler Robbins) Clifford

Now suppose the subterranean tube or lake of Old Faithful to be freshly filled with its million gallons of water.
— from Among the Forces by Henry White Warren