Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look as though you did not believe him, This opposition on your part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

To the Greek, it seemed absurd that such an activity as, say, the cobbler punching holes in leather, or using wax and needle and thread, could give an adequate knowledge of the world.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn’t know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of the whole system: “ON LITERATURE.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

They praised his inflexible love of justice; and, in the pursuit of justice, the emperor was easily tempted to consider clemency as a weakness, and passion as a virtue.
— 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

That would have drawn General Sherman to General Thomas, but Polk, having interior lines of transit, could have been in time for Johnston to strike and break up the road and bridge behind Thomas before Sherman could reach him.
— from From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet

And worst of all, in this imaginative departure, we find that Poetry herself is leaving our shores.
— from Goldsmith English Men of Letters Series by William Black

In payment he issued letters of credit, signed with his totem, the otter.
— from The War Chief of the Ottawas : A chronicle of the Pontiac war by Thomas Guthrie Marquis

And though Parismus himself is less of an Amadis than Amadis, the "contrast of friends," founded by that hero and Galaor, is kept up by his association with a certain Pollipus—"a man of his hands" if ever there was one, for with them he literally wrings the neck of the enchantress Bellona, who has enticed him to embrace her.
— from The English Novel by George Saintsbury

Before the meeting between Becket and the king, the pope had issued letters of suspension against those who had assisted at the coronation of the young prince, and Becket returned to England with those letters upon his person, and immediately proceeded upon the work of excommunication.
— from Heroines of the Crusades by C. A. (Celestia Angenette) Bloss

Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he is lavish of those of others, and thus enriches libertines and profligates who have consumed the patrimony of their fathers in debauchery."
— from The Irish Race in the Past and the Present by Augustus J. Thébaud

per head in lieu of wool.
— from A First Year in Canterbury Settlement by Samuel Butler