It is a law of tendency, not a precise and invariable law such as those of physics aim at being.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

imposter, pretender, soi-disant[Fr], humbug; adventurer; Cagliostro, Fernam Mendez Pinto; ass in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

Now passing through St. Mary Over’s close (in possession of the Lord Mountacute), and Pepper alley, into Long Southwark, on the right hand thereof the market-hill, where the leather is sold, there stood the late named parish church of St. Margaret, given to St. Mary Overies by Henry I., put down and joined with the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, and united to the late dissolved priory church of St. Mary Overy.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

Denial is precisely the thing that is impossible to him.—In the same way he lacks argumentative capacity, and has no belief that an article of faith, a “truth,” may be established by proofs (— his proofs are inner “lights,” subjective sensations of happiness and self-approval, simple “proofs of power”—).
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The next, but tho’ the next, yet far disjoin’d, Came Salius, and Euryalus behind; Then Helymus, whom young Diores plied, Step after step, and almost side by side, His shoulders pressing; and, in longer space, Had won, or left at least a dubious race.
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

[Pg 195] B.C. 234 ( a.u. 520) The following year the Romans divided their forces into three parts in order that all the rebels, finding war waged upon them at once, might not render assistance to one another; and they sent Postumius Albinus into Liguria, Spurius Carvilius against the Corsicans, and Publius Cornelius, the prætor urbanus, into Sardinia.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of the future.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Having thus, as it were, abstracted from all the empirical elements contained in the concept of a political and international law, such as, for instance, the evil tendency in human nature which makes compulsion necessary, we may give the following proposition as the transcendental formula of public right:—“All actions relating to the rights of other men are wrong, if the maxims from which they follow are inconsistent with publicity.”
— from Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay by Immanuel Kant

Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine outgrowth of Salem.
— from A Study of Hawthorne by George Parsons Lathrop

The waiters and people at inns look so hard at us to see us so liberal as to horse-feed, fire, candle, beds, and room, while we are so very very sparing in the article of drink!
— from The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

She makes a pale apparition in Lady Suffolk's correspondence, soliciting a place for her brother, Lord Grandison, with the offer of a bribe, and subsiding under the royal confidant's rebuke.
— from Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections by Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of

” It took some days for this phase to pass, and it left some scars and something like a decision.
— from Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells