Thou hast, quoth Panurge, a right, clear, and neat spirit, Friar John, my metropolitan cod; thou speakst in very deed pertinently and to purpose.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

I have coveted understanding for the service of my present and real conveniences, and not to lay up a stock for my posterity.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

They have assumed that people actually regard causes as necessary.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Now, English citizens are philosophers and Roman citizens are nothing.
— from A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 03 by Voltaire

Its senior editor is William Cauldwell, late Senator from the IXth District, comprising Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland Counties, and now the Democratic candidate for re-election.
— from A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times. by Henry Sampson

It is highly poisonous, and resembles conine and nicotine in its general properties.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson

Close-grown plantations are rarely chosen as nesting sites, and small belts of birch and oak are favorite nesting grounds, provided that there is plenty of space between the trees.
— from Life Histories of North American Shore Birds, Part 1 (of 2) by Arthur Cleveland Bent

Here and there, above this shelf, a head of Niobe, hanging to a nail, presented her pose of woe; a Venus smiled; a hand thrust itself forward like that of a pauper asking alms; a few “ecorches,” yellowed by smoke, looked like limbs snatched over-night from a graveyard; besides these objects, pictures, drawings, lay figures, frames without paintings, and paintings without frames gave to this irregular apartment that studio physiognomy which is distinguished for its singular jumble of ornament and bareness, poverty and riches, care and neglect.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac