I am rather inclined to believe in ‘the impulse from a vernal wood,’ though of course the artistic value of such an impulse depends entirely on the kind of temperament that receives it, so that the return to Nature would come to mean simply the advance to a great personality.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

It was not mere obstinacy; it was not the pride of opinion: it was the thunders of conscience, the awful voice of Sinai, within him; he dared not do otherwise.
— from Fresh Fields by John Burroughs

Here I had the feeling of being back in one of those primitive cattle-breeding establishments, or estancias as they are called, on the South American pampas, where every one, dogs and cats included, lived in the big smoke-blackened kitchen by day, and the fuel was dried stalks of Cardoon thistle and various other stout annuals, with dried cow-dung for peat, and greasy strong-smelling bones of dead horses, cows and sheep.
— from The Land's End: A Naturalist's Impressions In West Cornwall, Illustrated by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

Two gentlemen near me were discussing the question of an Established Church, one contending, that a variety of sects tended only to confuse, perplex, and unchristianise the uneducated, unthinking class, while the other asserted that this very class adhered most tenaciously to whatever faith had been taught them.
— from Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland by Bayard Taylor