They may produce a volition, which, so far from being necessary, is always conditioned—a volition to which the ought enunciated by reason, sets an aim and a standard, gives permission or prohibition.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

For this reason all Roman Stoics apply metaphors and images derived from military life.
— from The Enchiridion by Epictetus

This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, and kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so as not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, what in my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easy and indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to go about to subject public and established customs and institutions, to the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for private reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that upon the divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon the civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything, of innovation.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

His fundamental desire is that the war which is IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity—it is the "Sabbath of Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine, who was himself such a man.—Should, however, the contrariety and conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus to life—and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women, perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women, and not yet entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed by intrigues, but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the first fall in woman.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

A call at Meg's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Daisy and Demijohn, still further fortified her for the tete-a-tete, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about and run away.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Then the terrified people raised such a deafening clamour that the wolves, frightened by the noise, hastily dropped them.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

Prior to the erection of the bridge on the Kingston Road, the Don was crossed near the same spot by means of a scow, worked by the assistance of a rope stretched across the stream.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

“Doctor,” she went on, “did the sister tell you that M. le Maire has gone to get that mite of a child?” The doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should be avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case the fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like members of the family, too humanized, methought, to roast well.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

When Viola speaks she is a living person, instinct with recklessness, sweetness, and pathos.
— from Francis Beaumont: Dramatist A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, And of His Association with John Fletcher by Charles Mills Gayley

"Swedenborg also mentions a kind of spirits who raise scruples about trifles, and thus trouble the consciences of the unwary.
— from Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts by August Strindberg

[218] Marion and Katie and Uncle Jim had gone off a little ahead of the others, and Irma found herself with Richard Sanford and his sister.
— from Irma in Italy: A Travel Story by Helen Leah Reed

He looked jest like that when he wuz a lookin' after prowlin' red skins and red coats; when the sun wuz under dark clouds, and the day wuz dark 100 years ago.
— from Samantha at Saratoga by Marietta Holley

In this famous retreat of 200 miles through the Carolinas the Americans forded three rivers, whose waters, swollen by recent rains soon after the Americans had crossed, checked the British in their pursuit.
— from American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States History by Wilbur F. (Wilbur Fisk) Gordy

I asked, remaining stubbornly and persistently ox-like in my placidity.
— from The Prairie Mother by Arthur Stringer

Top of Rigi, Saturday, August 19th.
— from Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Dorothy Wordsworth