As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

No one is so well beloved—no one fills so large a space in the hearts of a thousand slaves, as young Madam McCoy, the orphan mistress of the old Norwood estate.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

The effect conveys our view to its usual cause, a certain degree of emotion to a certain magnitude of the object; nor do we consider, that comparison may change the emotion without changing anything in the object.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

If he marched against the enemy, the pleasant valleys of Mount Haemus opposed an insuperable barrier; but in his retreat, he explored, with fearless curiosity, the most difficult and obsolete paths, which had almost escaped the memory of the oldest native.
— 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

" "Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?" "Never, till we go away for good!
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

I can no more believe in this than that the well-adapted form of a race-horse or greyhound, which before the principle of selection by man was well understood, excited so much surprise in the minds of the older naturalists, can thus be explained.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

After a month or two of negligent attendance, this was an expedient she devised to make me more assiduous, for I could not easily persuade myself to be so.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Wharton, Marquis of, translation of Novella of Belfagor , xxxi .
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

"For speedy Vengeance undertakes the punishment of those that are to be corrected at once in the body and through their bodies, and she mildly passes by many offences that only need expiation; but if the cure of vice demands further pains, then the deity hands over such criminals after death to Justice, and those whom Justice 360 rejects as altogether incurable, Erinnys (the third and fiercest of Adrastea's officers), pursues as they are fleeing and wandering about in various directions, and with pitiless severity utterly undoes them all, and thrusts them down to a place not to be seen or spoken about.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

rememberst thou Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now; Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais'd By our own quick'ning power, when fatal course Had circl'd his full Orbe, the birth mature Of this our native Heav'n, Ethereal Sons.
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

Thou slayest men of thy own nation without good reason and killest youths.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6) by Max Duncker

The existence of the order may be traced up to the times of the apostles; but this supplies no evidence in proof that each, or any one minister of the order now living is a legitimate descendant, in the genealogical line, from either of the two favourite apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul.
— from The Sheepfold and the Common; Or, Within and Without. Vol. 1 (of 2) by Timothy East

"To be candid, I thought that very matter over the other night."
— from The Truth About Tristrem Varick: A Novel by Edgar Saltus

It was midnight on the ocean, Not a street car was in sight,
— from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2. No. 17, February, 1921 America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy by Various

Some were experts, some were beginners; but all save a very few must have been alike in this, that they had learnt their Esperanto at home, and, as far as oral use went, had only been able to speak it (if at all) with members of their own national groups—that is, with compatriots who had acquired the language under the same conditions as to pronunciation, etc., as themselves.
— from International Language, Past, Present & Future With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar by Walter John Clark

The canals of irrigation bordered by trees traverse the plain; and, thanks to this semi-aquatic condition, the vineyards do not present the monotony of those of Narbonne and Beziers.
— from A Book of the Pyrenees by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

He is a dealer in old clothes, who has bought at second-hand the cast-off garments of fairy-tales, and makes of them (often not without clever tailoring) new costumes, in which we may recognise, strangely jumbled and joined, rags of ancient gala stuffs and fragments of damascened suits of armour.
— from Degeneration by Max Simon Nordau

It should be observed, however, that they were Members of the Old North Church.
— from The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination (Vol. 2 of 3) by Robert Calef

He made the mistake of takin' ondue notice of a pair of black eyes I'd got—somehow they looked mirthful to him, an'—" The Texan paused and gazed reproachfully toward a flick of a white apron as the loquacious one disappeared through the back door.
— from The Texan A Story of the Cattle Country by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx