A tale, however beautifully wrought, That's wide of reason by a long remove: For all the gods must of themselves enjoy Immortal aeons and supreme repose, Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar: Immune from peril and immune from pain, Themselves abounding in riches of their own, Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus

Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philosophy to be useless to the rest of the world, he is right; but also tell him to attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

But these faint and scattered intimations that the tragic world, being but a fragment of a whole beyond our vision, must needs be a contradiction and no ultimate truth, avail nothing to interpret the mystery.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

With the world making every Belgian man a hero and the unknowing convinced that a citizen soldiery at Liege—defended by the Belgian standing army—had rushed from their homes with rifles and beaten German infantry, it is right to repeat that the schipperke spirit was not universal, that at no time had Belgium more than a hundred thousand men under arms, and that on the Dixmude line she maintained never more than eighty thousand men out of a population of seven millions, which should yield from seven hundred thousand to a million; while they lost a good deal of sympathy both in England and in France, from all I heard, through the number of able-bodied refugees who were disinclined to serve.
— from My Year of the War Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the First Time in its Complete Form by Frederick Palmer

With the horses stumbling on, the women watched for something to meet either sight or hearing, but there was nothing until they again neared the creek.
— from Laramie Holds the Range by Frank H. (Frank Hamilton) Spearman

“On the whole, it may be said that the book does not undertake to advance new theories but to present clearly the principles underlying the best accounting practice.
— from The Book Review Digest, Volume 13, 1917 Thirteenth Annual Cumulation Reviews of 1917 Books by Various

It was a miserable place from all accounts, and was described by Captain James Lowe, in 1836, "as an expensive port, and of no use to any nation that might possess it,"
— from Prisoners Their Own Warders A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements Established 1825 by John Frederick Adolphus McNair

The Veterinary' London volume 5 page 543.) asserts that not unfrequently there are nineteen, the additional one being always the posterior rib.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — Volume 1 by Charles Darwin

He thinks I have stolen a betting-book, which everyone who knows anything knows can be of no use to anyone now that poor Cook is dead.”
— from The Most Extraordinary Trial of William Palmer, for the Rugeley Poisonings, which lasted Twelve Days by Anonymous

"It is of no use translating a native term as 'father,' if father did not mean to the savage what it means to us.
— from The Family among the Australian Aborigines, a Sociological Study by Bronislaw Malinowski