Subject matter is then regarded as something complete in itself; it is just something to be learned or known, either by the voluntary application of mind to it or through the impressions it makes on mind.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

It seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him as such; some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown him, that he might live thereby; this perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of things!—Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern person.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

He led me into the room and sat me down in the deck chair.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Montgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck chair. M'ling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began panting like a dog.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

queue (indeed, it was more neatly dressed than that of any man in the regiment), and subsequently gained his confidence by a thousand little arts and compliments, which as a gentleman myself I knew how to employ.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

“I move into the Rectory at Summer Street next June.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

There may be also a tacit presumption, that there are just reasons for such reserve which may perhaps be necessary out of regard to the rights of a third person: rights which, in the common judgment of all sober men, may be sufficient to counterbalance any obligation in either of the persons engaged in the treaty 302 to make a full disclosure of his views and sentiments.—These principles, duly considered, will supply many inferences to reconcile any seeming contradiction in the opinions, that have been advanced.
— from The Rights of War and Peace by Hugo Grotius

To many in the room a sentence of “guilty” would mean the end of their hopes of a winter school worthy of the name.
— from The Silent Alarm by Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell

This time I did not even see him—he did not wish me in the room; and so, having half a day to spare, I decided to send my maid on, and stop over and see you , Crystal."
— from Anne: A Novel by Constance Fenimore Woolson

There was something military in their rhythm, and something relentless and machine-like in their persistence.
— from Rustic Sounds, and Other Studies in Literature and Natural History by Darwin, Francis, Sir

She came to his house on her old mare, in the rain and snow the night before, to get him to go to see someone, some “friend” of hers who was sick.
— from The Burial of the Guns by Thomas Nelson Page

Whatever of extra peril is connected with a movement so much more intelligible than Repeal, and so much more in alliance with the natural prepossessions of the Irish mind—better it is, after all, that this peril should be forced to show itself in open daylight, than that it should be lurking in ambush or mining underground; ready for a burst when other mischief might be abroad, or evading the clue of our public guardians.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844 by Various

I heard men muttering in the ranks and some I rebuked to silence, but my rebukes lightened no man's heart.
— from Hira Singh : when India came to fight in Flanders by Talbot Mundy

Imagine a man in this city, an intelligent man, say with two or three millions of coats, eight or ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, billions of neckties, and imagine that man getting up at four o'clock in the morning, in the rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all day to get another necktie!
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll