I only give my authority to his excesses, and relieve his conscience at the expense of my own.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

104.—Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.
— from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

But I mean always to help everywhere and every one.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

—We have a low estimation of good people, because they are gregarious animals: we know how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodiness of milk-and-watery souls.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Yawning lazily, he makes the sign of the cross over his mouth, and turns his eyes up towards the sky where pigeons fly, bathing in the hot air.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

As to Mr. Burdovsky, allowing for his principles, we may acknowledge that he engaged in the business with very little personal aim in view.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then away home, and in my way called upon Mr. Rawlinson (my uncle Wight being out of town), for his advice to answer a letter of my uncle Robert, wherein he do offer me a purchase to lay some money upon, that joynes upon some of his own lands, and plainly telling me that the reason of his advice is the convenience that it will give me as to his estate, of which I am exceeding glad, and am advised to give up wholly the disposal of my money to him, let him do what he will with it, which I shall do.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Good-night, my darlings," said Mrs. March, as the hymn ended, for no one cared to try another.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

He stood listening for a moment, and then his eye fell on the little volume by William Morris.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

The nomads bury those who die just in the same manner as the Hellenes, except only the Nasamonians: these bury bodies in a sitting posture, taking care at the moment when the man expires to place him sitting and not to let him die lying down on his back.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

Vast and momentous as was the change, fatal as it might well appear to those who could conceive of no unity but the unity of a central government, the victory of the Magyars appears to have excited no feeling among the German Liberals at Vienna but one of satisfaction.
— from A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 by Charles Alan Fyffe

While his pipe is puffing out, Sue he’s putting to the rout, Gossiping, who takes delight To shool her knitting out at night, And back-bite neighbours ’bout the town— Who’s got new caps, and who a gown, And many a thing, her evil eye Can see they don’t come honest by.
— from Poems by John Clare

[Pg 27] still watched over us in our misery, and that his ear was open to our cry: and although we knew not the dark path that lay before us, yet we sought it with His words on our lips,—“The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.
— from The Loss of the Australia A narrative of the loss of the brig Australia by fire on her voyage from Leith to Sydney by Adam Yule

Her voice would have been deemed [208] rather high-pitched, for "ears polite," but it was not deficient in melody; and though her expression was grave, and even sad, upon our first encounter, I soon found that mirth, and not sadness, was the natural character of her mind, as of her countenance.
— from Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, Vol. 1 (of 3) With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected by Mrs. (Anna) Jameson

The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every reason to do.
— from Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Man, as the highest expression of the planet, in his three-fold nature, becomes the gleaner, the classifier, and the repository of these facts.
— from Solaris Farm: A Story of the Twentieth Century by Milan C. Edson

With a wondering gaze she looked full into my face for a moment, and then her eyes closed again.
— from A Boy Crusoe; or, The Golden Treasure of the Virgin Islands by Allan Eric

When a peal of great length is attempted there is, therefore, cause to fear that at the last moment one of the men at the 'heavy end,' as the bells near the tenor are called, may knock up.
— from Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 725, November 17, 1877 by Various

"I'm sure he's been sorry many a time he ever left you!"
— from Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett