The general who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to these people.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

Be civil, but receive full homage; they owe everything to you, and you owe nothing save civility.
— from Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 For the First Time Collected and Translated, with Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, from Contemporary Sources by Emperor of the French Napoleon I

In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Their name of Normandy still clings to the new home; but all else that was Norse disappeared as the conquerors intermarried with the native Franks and accepted French ideals and spoke the French language.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

“Oh, no,” said Carrie.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

When a man is dissatisfied and feels unhappy, how trivial seem to him the shapes of the lime-trees, the shadows, the clouds, all the beauties of nature, so complacent, so indifferent!
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

But my especial obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery itself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, as a member of this House, was accountable.
— from Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

In this, however, we were disappointed, the town of Villa Franca boasting of no such convenience on any scale.
— from The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 by G. R. (George Robert) Gleig

He gave notice early in January, 1854, that when the bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska should come before the Senate, he would move that "the Missouri Compromise be repealed, and that the citizens of the several States shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories."
— from Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860 by James Gillespie Blaine

"Oh, Meg, that's what I felt, only not so clearly, when the Wilcoxes were so competent, and seemed to have their hands on all the ropes. " "Don't you feel it now?" "I remember Paul at breakfast," said Helen quietly.
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

Behold the whole range has sprung into life, separated into individuals; gorges are cut where none had appeared; chasms come to light; cañons and all sorts of divisions are seen; foothills move forward to their proper places, and taller peaks turn at angles to each other; shapes and colors that one never suspected come out in the picture: the transformation is marvelous.
— from A Bird-Lover in the West by Olive Thorne Miller

There was reciprocal joy in their companionship and his long absent brother was glad in the pleasures both of home and of nature so congenial to his feelings and his tastes.
— from The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 1 (of 4) by William Milligan Sloane