At night to supper, had a good sack posset and cold meat, and sent my guests away about ten o’clock at night, both them and myself highly pleased with our management of this day; and indeed their company was very fine, and Mrs. Clerke a very witty, fine lady, though a little conceited and proud.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The assistance which may be given by history to a more intelligent sympathetic understanding of the social situations of the present in which individuals share is a permanent and constructive moral asset.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

She was highly delighted in playing such a mischievous prank and completely mystifying and embarrassing a poor boy.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yonder’s old coil at home: it is proved, my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused, the Prince and Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fled and gone.
— from Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare

And this is the language of nature when everything speaks out of its own property, and continually manifests and declares itself, ... for each thing reveals its mother, which thus gives the essence and the will to the form.”
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

"I don't believe that," said Tip, plainly; "anybody can make a pun."
— from The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

He being gone to Chelsey by coach I to his lodgings, where my wife staid for me, and she from thence to see Mrs. Pierce and called me at Whitehall stairs (where I went before by land to know whether there was any play at Court to-night) and there being none she and I to Mr. Creed to the Exchange, where she bought something, and from thence by water to White Fryars, and wife to see Mrs. Turner, and then came to me at my brother’s, where I did give him order about my summer clothes, and so home by coach, and after supper to bed to my wife, with whom I have not lain since I used to lie with my father till to-night.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Therefore thou oughtest to cast away all things which hinder grace, if thou longest to receive the inpouring thereof. Seek a secret place for thyself, love to dwell alone with thyself, desire the conversation of no one; but rather pour out thy devout prayer to God, that thou mayest possess a contrite mind and a pure conscience.
— from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas

pelagatos m mudlark ('poor and contemptible man' A. ).
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

And if you think that I speak too strongly on this point, recollect that I do no more than St. Paul does, when he sums up the most lofty and mystical of all his Epistles, the Epistle to the Ephesians, by simple commands to husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, as if he should say,—You wish to be holy?
— from True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries by Charles Kingsley

State provision of hygienic preventative and curative means are to be given free to those in danger from infection as well as to all suffering from venereal diseases.
— from Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards by C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine) Hartley

And it is remarkable, that in all the licentious writings and bitter satirical tales of the philosophic freethinkers, such as Voltaire, who never fails to have a taunting hit at the clergy, the Curé is generally an amiable personage, a charitable man, a friend to the poor and unfortunate, a peace-maker, and a man of piety and worth.
— from Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and reading societies. by John Robison

The abbé contributed the same sum; and with these eight hundred crowns I proceeded to Paris, a city more abounding with alchymists than any other in the world, resolved never to leave it until I had either found the philosopher’s stone or spent all my money.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

They began to teach a cult which destroyed the relations between parent and child, master and servant, lord and retainer.
— from A Boy of Old Japan by R. (Robert) Van Bergen

"First he praised and commended many and singular virtues planted and set in her majesty, which her highness not acknowledging of shaked her head, bit her lips and her fingers, and sometimes broke forth into passion and these words; 'Non est veritas, et utinam'—On his praising virginity, she said to the orator, 'God's blessing of thy heart, there continue.'
— from Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth by Lucy Aikin

It is of little importance in regard to Pope, and contains merely a re-contradiction of a contradiction of Mr. Gilchrist's.
— from Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 With His Letters and Journals by Thomas Moore

The author does not identify his undertaking with the psychology of association, and protests against considering mind-activity as passive processes.
— from The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 by Various