For the reason why such gods seemed to us not to be able to give even an earthly kingdom, was not because they are very great and exalted, whilst that is something small and abject, which they, in their so great sublimity, would not condescend to care for, but because, however deservedly any one may, in consideration of human frailty, despise the falling pinnacles of an earthly kingdom, these gods have presented such an appearance as to seem most unworthy to have the granting and preserving of even those entrusted to them; and consequently, if (as we have taught in the two last books of our work, where this matter is treated of) no god out of all that crowd, either belonging to, as it were, the plebeian or to the noble gods, is fit to give mortal kingdoms to mortals, how much less is he able to make immortals of mortals?
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

“It must be so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is only now gradually opening before me.”
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

'Has he only new gods, or none at all?'
— from Apology by Plato

The hell of these days is the infinite terror of Not getting on, especially of Not making money.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

No other news goes out to the world save that which stamps us as a race of cutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts.
— from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked.
— from The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James

Then they adopted the precaution of never going out alone or after nightfall, and of having their houses guarded.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

Billy never objected to be the bearer of news, good or ill, so that it was sensational; but a thought struck him at seeing the lighted windows.
— from Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

Till the bright morn her purple beam displays; Lest, in the silence and the shades of night, Greece on her sable ships attempt her flight.
— from The Iliad by Homer

He admired Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that "Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one.
— from Excursions by Henry David Thoreau

"This," he adds, "is what I hear, but whether it is true or not, God only knows, who sees the hearts of men."
— from Studies from Court and Cloister: being essays, historical and literary dealing mainly with subjects relating to the XVIth and XVIIth centuries by J. M. (Jean Mary) Stone

The City of Norfolk goes on short trips back and {77} forth between Norfolk and Baltimore on Chesapeake Bay.
— from Ships at Work by Mary Elting

Neither he or anybody else has yet found, in chalk and placed there by the process of nature, gold, or anything more like gold than pyrites, although a Press-man, greatly daring, "interviewed" Sir William Ramsay not long since on the presence of gold in sea-water.
— from Through East Anglia in a Motor Car by James Edmund Vincent

He could conceive of no greater one.
— from The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln by Dixon, Thomas, Jr.