Now when the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing either for myself or for any one else, but how we judge it by mere observation (intuition or reflection).
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

He asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach.”
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

As “predigested” food, such dishes are decided preferable to the “ grosses-pièces ,” which besides energetic mastication require skillful manipulation of fork and knife; such exercise was unwelcome on the Roman couches.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

They indulged a convenient latitude for the interpretation of Scripture: and as often as they were pressed by the literal sense, they could escape to the intricate mazes of figure and allegory.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

In a case of definite suspension, the time for which the delinquent is to be suspended, whether for one month, for three, or six months, or for a longer or shorter period, is always mentioned in the sentence.
— from The Principles of Masonic Law A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages and Landmarks of Freemasonry by Albert Gallatin Mackey

When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers, when they exercised the various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most important labors, and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave, they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

When the ancient Greeks would accuse any one of extreme insufficiency, they would say, in common proverb, that he could neither read nor swim; he was of the same opinion, that swimming was of great use in war, and himself found it so; for when he had to use diligence, he commonly swam over the rivers in his way; for he loved to march on foot, as also did Alexander the Great.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

At last it struck eleven and he made up his mind, once for all, that if that “damned” Agafya did not come back within ten minutes he should go out without waiting for her, making “the kids” promise, of course, to be brave when he was away, not to be naughty, not to cry from fright.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then she’d swim laps at a nearby pool or walk her dog amid cypress and eucalyptus trees, perhaps with friends, perhaps alone, perhaps mulling over future articles for PC , where she once warned would-be telecommuters of the need for “regular breaks from the concentration of work.”
— from The Silicon Jungle by David H. Rothman

He was received at the court of Versailles with every mark of favour and distinction; [38] and all his influence was employed in impressing on the cabinet, the importance and policy of granting succours to the United States.
— from The Life of George Washington: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions by John Marshall

There is a threadbare shine on his apparel that suggests a heartache in each whitened seam, but the ladies are mirrors of fashion, as well as moulds of form.
— from Worldly Ways & Byways by Eliot Gregory

Above a beautiful face, unrouged, and without a single patch, they saw, instead of a powdered and feathered mountain, a soft mass of flowing, almost dishevelled, warm brown hair.
— from Kophetua the Thirteenth by Julian Stafford Corbett

It was Bertie who disappointed me once; for all I could see, it was most likely to be Alice now.
— from Heart and Cross by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

For five months he had wandered a fugitive; leading a precarious life in the midst of fatigues and of dangers surpassing anything recorded in history.
— from Wonderful Escapes by Frédéric Bernard

Congress had violated the sublimest principles of law, had broken faith with the people; had opened a wide door to slavery; had blotted from the map of the United States the last asylum where the oppressed might seek protection; had put the country in a way to be reddened with a fratricidal war, and made our flag a flaunting lie in the eyes of the civilized world.
— from History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams

" "I allow that there is a strange mixture of fustian and maudlin in all these things," answered De Montaigne; "but they are but the windfalls of trees that may bear rich fruit in due season; meanwhile, any new school is better than eternal imitations of the old.
— from Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

For the moving tragedy of circumstance, of lovers sundered by fate only to be swiftly joined in exultant death, we have the profounder tragedy 107 of mutually destroying energies, of grievously miscalculating men, of failure and frustration dogging the steps of the strenuous and the wise, of destiny searching out the fatal weakness of the strong.
— from Montaigne and Shakspere by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson