No man can be in perfect accord with any one but himself—not even with a friend or the partner of his life; differences of individuality and temperament are always bringing in some degree of discord, though it may be a very slight one.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a merry little man, who displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-up cassock; his specialty was a hatred of the Encyclopædia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the Rue M***** on summer evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then stood, halted to listen to the shock of the balls and the piercing voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monseigneur Cotiret, Bishop in partibus of Caryste: “Mark, Abbé, I make a cannon.”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

SYN: Maze, complexity, bewilderment, involution, perplexity, inexplicable, difficulty.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

“Precisely, madame,” replied Monte Cristo; “but I perceive I have not much to teach you.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

,” said Monte Cristo; “but I preferred having an entrance which would allow me to see the Bois de Boulogne over my gate.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

It showed, no doubt, that Gibberne has still much to learn before his preparation is a manageable convenience, but its practicability it certainly demonstrated beyond all cavil.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

528 210 Not more dignified and noble than this is it to keep silent when an enemy reviles you, "as one swims by a smooth and mocking cliff," but in practice it is better.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

The fact that there is actually something unintelligible, that this misery of the understanding and its conceptions is limited, conditional, final, and deceptive,—this is beyond question Kant's great gift.” Let any one consider whether a man can be in possession of a desire to gain an insight into moral things when he feels himself comforted from the start by a belief in the inconceivableness of these things!
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Hay seemed to like to be used, and this was one of his many charms; but in politics this sort of good-nature demands supernatural patience.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

I kissed her, saying that I was going to the country to collect together what remained of the substances that I had used in my ceremonies, but I promised to dine with her on the morrow.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The world has rarely persecuted any body of men conspicuous by its poverty, or if it has done so has rarely persecuted them for long.
— from A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767 by R. B. (Robert Bontine) Cunninghame Graham

"I forget that I am the servant of my country, because I prefer being the servant of my queen.
— from Frederick the Great and His Court by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

A very remarkable circumstance in Ezekiel, however, requires to be still more minutely considered; because it promotes essentially the right understanding of the passage before us.
— from Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, Vol. 1 by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

I suppose you are shocked at my character: but, in painting myself such as I am, you should give me credit for my sincerity.
— from The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 2 by Walter Scott

In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation.
— from Memoirs of My Life and Writings by Edward Gibbon

The understanding of American affairs was more common, but intimate political association between the commonwealths was still unknown.
— from Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century by Charles Morris

Of the two, the Land Monitor, being the more common, both in Palestine and Egypt, has perhaps the best claim to be considered as the Koach of Scripture.
— from Bible Animals; Being a Description of Every Living Creature Mentioned in the Scripture, from the Ape to the Coral. by J. G. (John George) Wood