We may however learn this Lesson from it, that since Devotion it self (which one would be apt to think could not be too warm) may disorder the Mind, unless its Heats are tempered with Caution and Prudence, we should be particularly careful to keep our Reason as cool as possible, and to guard our selves in all Parts of Life against the Influence of Passion, Imagination, and Constitution.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

A simple life is its own reward, and continually realises its function.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians, appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of toleration.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

And would not the democratic movement itself find for [Pg 361] the first time a sort of goal, salvation, and justification, if some one appeared who availed himself of it—so that at last, beside its new and sublime product, slavery (for this must be the end of European democracy), that higher species of ruling and Cæsarian spirits might also be produced, which would stand upon it, hold to it, and would elevate themselves through it?
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

The woman asked her what she did there, but she looked very strangely and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

When again it is asked, What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation?
— from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

And thus till night, that our musick come, and the Office ready and candles, and also W. Batelier and his sister Susan come, and also Will.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

She had held the position of reader and companion to the Princess Augusta of Prussia, and had thus become intimately acquainted with her, and was regarded by her own association as almost a bosom friend and confidante of that great lady.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

The difficulty then is, why any objects ever cause pure love or hatred, and produce not always the mixt passions of respect and contempt.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Johnson had not flattered himself with the hopes of receiving any civility from this nobleman; for he said to me, when I mentioned Lord Marchmont as one who could tell him a great deal about Pope,—'Sir, he will tell me nothing.'
— from Life of Johnson, Volume 3 1776-1780 by James Boswell

By the same means the situation is humanized to the last degree, and the heart of the spectator, although strained to the uttermost with pity for the heroic maiden whose life when full of brightest hopes was sacrificed to affection and piety, has still some feeling left for the living desolation of the man, whose patriotic zeal, degenerating into tyranny, brought his city to the brink of ruin, and cost him the lives of his two sons and of his wife, whose dying curse, as well as that of Haemon, is denounced upon him.
— from The Seven Plays in English Verse by Sophocles

A great deal of treasure was secured, but some of it consisted of property which could not be easily turned into cash or carried away, and he had with him a body of rapacious and conscienceless scoundrels who were [Pg 180] continually clamoring for as large a share of the available spoils—such as jewels, money, and small articles of value—as they could induce their commander to allow them, and, in consequence of this greediness of his own men, his share of the plunder was not always as large as it ought to be.
— from Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts by Frank Richard Stockton

They have held that every pagan is a rational being, and by virtue of this fact has known something of the moral law; and that to the extent of the knowledge he has had, he is as guilty for the transgression of law, and as really under its condemnation, as the dweller under the light of revelation and civilization.
— from Sermons to the Natural Man by William G. T. (William Greenough Thayer) Shedd

He pointed down the hatchway, where the complication of rods and cranks glistened in the hold.
— from The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

In these days the fort is almost in ruins the walls, for want of repair, are crumbling in all directions; only the dwellings are kept in tolerable condition.
— from The Bee Hunters: A Tale of Adventure by Gustave Aimard

"She was always a woman of good sense until she took up with those ultra views of religion, and Conway.
— from A Little Girl in Old Washington by Amanda M. Douglas

the valuation of races and classes.—
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He notes the stages and points to which his plans have reached; he indicates, with a favourite quotation or apophthegm—" Plus ultra "—" ausus vana contemnere "—" aditus non nisi sub persona infantis " soon to be familiar to the world in his published writings—the lines of argument, sometimes alternative ones, which were before him; he draws out schemes of inquiry, specimen tables, distinctions and classifications about the subject of Motion, in English interlarded with Latin, or in Latin interlarded with English, of his characteristic and practical sort; he notes the various sources from which he might look for help and co-operation—"of learned men beyond the seas"—"to begin first in France to print it"—"laying for a place to command wits and pens;" he has his eye on rich and childless bishops, on the enforced idleness of State prisoners in the Tower, like Northumberland and Raleigh, on the great schools and universities, where he might perhaps get hold of some college for "Inventors"—as we should say, for the endowment of research.
— from Bacon by R. W. (Richard William) Church

All other riots are ceased, except the little civil war between the sailors and coal-heavers, in which two or three lives are lost every week.
— from Letters of Horace Walpole — Volume II by Horace Walpole