And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

And they call the honourable the perfect good, because it [296] has naturally all the numbers which are required by nature, and because it discloses a perfect harmony.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

In study hours she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books I did not have in raised print.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

I called again next day early in the morning, received the same answer, and was desired to leave my name and business: I did so, and returned the day after, when the servant still affirmed that his master was gone abroad; though I perceived him, as I retired, observing me through a window.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Wherefore, Niccola causing the foot of the tower to be cut away on one side and supporting it with wooden props a braccio and a half in length, and then setting fire to them, as soon as the props were burnt [Pg 34] away it fell and was almost entirely shattered; which was held something so ingenious and useful for such affairs that later it passed into use, insomuch that, when there is need, any building is destroyed in very little time with this most easy method.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

It is well for gentlemen to talk of the age of chivalry; but remember the starving brutes whom they lead—men nursed in poverty, entirely ignorant, made to take a pride in deeds of blood—men who can have no amusement but in drunkenness, debauch, and plunder.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

And let us use the same phraseology as Scripture uses; for it makes no scruple of saying that the dead are not after but in death.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

There is no whole, no sum, no number, no amount, but is definite and limited; and to use those words with the word infinite, is as absurd as to say an infinite finite.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the contrary—I mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to become equally threatening—namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I'm not aristocratic, but I do object to being seen with a person who looks like a young prize-fighter," observed Jo severely.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

At first Miss Paget had been inclined to feel aggrieved by the presence of the young man whom she had seen writing letters in the gloomy dusk of the November afternoon; but in due time she came to accept him as a companion, and to feel that her joyless life would have been drearier without him.
— from Birds of Prey by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

I love my native air, but it does not love me; and the end of this delightful period was a cold, a fly-blister, and a migration by Strathairdle and Glenshee to the Castleton of Braemar.
— from Essays in the Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson

A political as well as a literary sensation was produced by his Histoire des Girondins , 1847, which, in fact, was inspired by his newly acquired belief in democracy.
— from Raphael; Or, Pages of the Book of Life at Twenty by Alphonse de Lamartine

Why the [Pg 376] other brigades of those divisions were not sent does not appear, but it does appear that there was a place for them on Johnson’s left, in the trenches that were vacated by the Federal Twelfth Corps when called over to reinforce the battle of Meade’s left.
— from From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet

"Why did you not act before, in Dawson?"
— from The Stampeder by Samuel Alexander White

“Oh, I’m not afraid; but I don’t want to quarrel with any man, nor to upset the lad.”
— from Steve Young by George Manville Fenn

"I am not angry, but I don't love you.
— from The Scarlet Bat: A Detective Story by Fergus Hume

He set this up in his chamber over a faldstool, and said three Paters and nine Aves before it daily.
— from The Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett

"I said I was not a believer in divorce."
— from Mrs. Maxon Protests by Anthony Hope

It shows us their conceptions of the Supreme Being and his relation to the world; it enables us to see what they admired in character as virtue, heroism, nobleness, and beauty; it discloses their mythology and their notions of religious worship; in a word, it bears witness to the fact that the various families of mankind are all of “one blood,” so far, at least, as to be precisely alike in nature.
— from Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology by John D. (John Denison) Baldwin