Can I, then, find fault with him, after having allowed that pains of the body are evils, that the ruin of a man’s fortunes is an evil, if he should say that every good man is not happy, when all those things which he reckons as evils may befall a good man?
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

You know what that verse of Shakespeare in the old Fifth Reader says—'the brave man is not he who feels no fear.'" "No—but it is 'he whose noble soul its fear subdues.'
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

And this, as I suppose, is the sort of argument with which you fancy that a child might refute me, and by which I stand refuted when I say that the unjust man is not happy.
— from Gorgias by Plato

To Thy grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of evil; for what might I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own sake?
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Many influential newspapers, however, spoke in the highest terms of her courage and ability and the justice of her cause.
— 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

My meaning is not hard to see; No one is from this failing free.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

May I never have luck if they're not gold rings, and real gold, and set with pearls as white as a curdled milk, and every one of them worth an eye of one's head!
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

That's very hard, said I; but may I not have to myself the closet in the room where we lie, with the key to lock up my things?
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

But whatever may be the nature of our [205] dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to those which go on when the mind is not held to attention by the will.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller

And see how it hangs: there was mercy for me in not having drawn down my father's anger on my heart's beloved.
— from Beauchamp's Career — Volume 5 by George Meredith

Misc. Inhabits New Holland, Liverpool Plains ?
— from Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2 by Grey, George, Sir

For the same reason, when the moon is new, her entire disk is visible when the atmosphere is very clear, by reason, as is supposed, of light reflected from the earth to the moon and back to us.
— from The Philosophy of the Weather. And a Guide to Its Changes by T. B. (Thomas Belden) Butler

May I inquire how it was that, entertaining such an opinion of me, you, a good many years after we all left school, accepted the offer of employment I made you--which never would have been made, I need hardly say, if I had known you then as I know you now?"
— from The Shield of Love by B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon

And should I be so happy as thus to distinguish myself, might I not hope'— 'Forgive my interruption,' said Flora.
— from Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since by Walter Scott

Oh, Milly, my Molly, langloo!’ and such another racket as they made I never heard before, and have never heard since.”
— from Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country by Joel Chandler Harris

I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our system:—could there be a finer balance of power than in a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on?
— from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Complete by George Meredith