It is more central, crucial, and representative than nutrition, which is in a way peripheral only; it is a more typical and rudimentary act, marking the ideal's first victory over the universal flux, before any higher function than reproduction itself has accrued to the animal.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

I am about to conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one of the most important questions of that day and of our own!
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For you see, pilot, if one of these birds is killed, it is certain that some one of the crew must die and be thrown overboard to become a Mother Carey chicken, and replace the one that has been destroyed.
— from Poor Jack by Frederick Marryat

The vegetables most commonly canned are rhubarb, tomatoes, corn, peas and string beans; those commonly preserved by pickling are cauliflower, cucumbers (both green and ripe), citron, green peppers and green tomatoes.
— from The Vegetable Garden: What, When, and How to Plant by Anonymous

Against this association the horse thieves and other criminals made common cause, and received tacit support from certain more reputable persons who condemned "the irregularity of the Regulators."
— from The Conquest of the Old Southwest; the romantic story of the early pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790 by Archibald Henderson

Another tale Hawthorne might have told me, the tale of an excellent man, whose very virtues, by some baneful moral chemistry, corrupt and ruin the people with whom he comes in contact.
— from Adventures Among Books by Andrew Lang

And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance.
— from The Life of Flavius Josephus by Flavius Josephus

It was late on the next day ere I retraced my steps towards town, my heart sad and heavy, careless what became of me for the future, and pondering whether I should not at once give up my college career and return to my uncle.
— from Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 by Charles James Lever

[128] Christian faithfulness detects mere talkatives, and they complain, "in so saying thou condemnest us also"; they will bear no longer, but seek refuge under more comfortable preachers, or in more candid company, and represent those faithful monitors as censorious, peevish, and melancholy men-lying at the catch-(Scott).
— from Works of John Bunyan — Volume 03 by John Bunyan