And all manner of actions, from which, until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night, outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation of old monuments, that was to say, so many different methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for truth.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Death-bed repentance is sowing seed at Martinmas.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listening to, even if one only laughed at the end of it.
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Pupils who in matters of ordinary practical experience have a ready and acute perception of the difference between the significant and the meaningless, often reach in school subjects a point where all things seem equally important or equally unimportant; where one thing is just as likely to be true as another, and where intellectual effort is expended not in discriminating between things, but in trying to make verbal connections among words.
— from How We Think by John Dewey

As a rule, in such spells, a list of names signifies that all those who have used and handed down this formula, are enumerated.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and-water way.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

After that date, as before, he continued to produce poems, tales, sketches, and romances in steady succession, and in 1897 his publishers undertook a uniform and orderly presentation of the results of more than thirty years of his literary activity.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte

The enemy's cavalry had retreated before us, but his infantry was reported in some strength at Branchville, on the farther side of the Edisto; yet on the appearance of a mere squad of our men they burned their own bridges the very thing I wanted, for we had no use for them, and they had.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

If you refuse I shall summon assistance and it will be taken forcibly.”
— from Boy Scouts in the North Sea; Or, The Mystery of a Sub by G. Harvey (George Harvey) Ralphson

None of the rivers in Shen Si are navigable, even now, for any considerable stretches, and the Yellow River itself has its strict limitations.
— from Ancient China Simplified by Edward Harper Parker

The warehouses and wholesale houses, the wholesale liquor house with a live eagle magnificently caged in one window, the big stove establishment, with its window full of ranges in shining steel and nickel-plate; these had been her world for so long!
— from Saturday's Child by Kathleen Thompson Norris

Had there been two documents for them to witness, they would have remembered it so soon after the occurrence."
— from Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

This," she continued, with a little tragic air, stretching out her arm to her sister, and facing the doctor—"this is Mrs Frederick Rider, or rather Mrs Rider, I should say, as he is the eldest of the family!
— from The Doctor's Family by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant