What could have been the state of society, what the amount of population, what the means of subsistence which rendered such gigantic works possible, will, perhaps, ever remain a mystery; and it is a wonderful example of the power of religious ideas in social life, that in the very country where, five hundred years ago, these grand works were being yearly executed, the inhabitants now only build rude houses of bamboo and thatch, and look upon these relics of their forefathers with ignorant amazement, as the undoubted productions of giants or of demons.
— from The Malay Archipelago, Volume 1 The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature by Alfred Russel Wallace

His first care in every settlement was to establish and promote education, religion and morality as the only true foundation of social as well as individual prosperity, and with all his courage and manly strength he rarely, if ever, was drawn into a lawsuit.
— from Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound by Emily Inez Denny

She had had time in the (what must have been) anxious interval of our absence, for some painful enough reflection, and my announcement had broken through the blindness of a selfish mind, and found its way where she seldom let anything come—to her feelings.
— from Miscellanea by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

Papaia!” Euripides rose and made a sign for silence.
— from Historical Miniatures by August Strindberg

“La musique, telle qu’elle était pratiquée en Russie au moyen age” (writes M. Soubier in his History of Russian Music ), “tenait à la tradition des religions et des mœurs païennes.”
— from The Puppet Show of Memory by Maurice Baring

A certain set of politicians had for their particular ends represented a mob as a terrific and formidable engine: alas!
— from St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by William Godwin

Plain Elma Ramsden, as much a matter of course as the trees in the park.
— from Flaming June by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.