When he got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day—it was somehow that way—mercy how the man would have made money!
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

These crowded cities have done their work; they were the best which a society largely based on selfishness and rapacity could construct, but they are in the nature of things entirely unadapted for a society in which the social side of our nature is demanding a larger share of recognition—a society where even the very love of self leads us to insist upon a greater regard for the well-being of our fellows.
— from Garden Cities of To-Morrow Being the Second Edition of "To-Morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform" by Howard, Ebenezer, Sir

Nor O nor I did any ever write 100 More quickly than he kindled, burst in flame, And crumbled all to ashes.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Polarity , [97] or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole [98] of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

This we believe is what took place; for if the Fête in Commemoration of the Dead was, as some authorities hold, established by St. Odilon to fall on the first of November, in direct accord with Samain or Halloween, then at some later period it was displaced by La Toussaint , for now it is celebrated on the second of November.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

Sometimes they would give a man several surnames, as a mark of the contempt or of the regard of his compatriots; sometimes the same gentleman was known by one name in Dobrzyn, and by a different title in the neighbouring hamlets.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

I would heartily wish that this other account were a false one, (nor indeed do all writers mention it,) viz.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

She not only died a good Catholic, but truly lived one; nay, I dare affirm (and I think I have had the opportunity to read the secrets of her heart) that it was only her aversion to singularity that prevented her acting the devotee in public; in a word, her piety was too sincere to give way to any affectation of it.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(Almanac, a character in The Staple of News , is described as a ‘doctor in physic.’)
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

A sense of near, incomprehensible danger affected the common people.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

All sorts of notions importunately demand attention, and he who thinks to examine all their credentials will find no time left for his own proper affairs.
— from The Gentle Reader by Samuel McChord Crothers

Our one nation is divided as it were into three sections, which were thrust each against the others to work out their destruction.
— from America's War for Humanity by Thomas Herbert Russell

The nose by means of which we smell food, to see whether it is sweet and good or not, is directly above the mouth; the eyes are above and on each side, like the lamps of an automobile, but swinging in sockets like search-lights; while the ears are a couple of inches behind, on each side of us, for catching from the sea of air the waves that we call sound.
— from A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson

It would then be demonstrable, that the mind of nations is deeply affected by the destructive conflict of the powers of nature, and that great disasters lead to striking changes in general civilisation.
— from The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania by J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl) Hecker

—The people assent by lifting up the head instead of nodding it down as we do; deaf mutes are said to do the same.
— from The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 by David Livingstone

Our nephew is dying, and the whole court has gone over to the king of Navarre.”
— from Catherine De Medici by Honoré de Balzac

We had to contrast this little company with some other gatherings which we have seen and heard in the hours of night in darkest Africa, where beer, the dance, licentiousness, and all forms of devil worship made night hideous.
— from South and South Central Africa A record of fifteen years' missionary labors among primitive peoples by Hannah Frances Davidson

He struck at the hollow pole, but, glass or not, it defied all his efforts.
— from Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 by Various