And he has used two means with reference to each end; dialectics and rhetoric, with reference to persuasion; analytical examination and philosophy, with reference to truth; omitting nothing which can bear upon discovery, or judgment, or use.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

By which examples we are wont to conclude, and with some reason, that events, especially in war, for the most part depend upon fortune, who will not be governed by nor submit unto human reasons and prudence, according to the poet: “Et male consultis pretium est: prudentia fallit Nec fortune probat causas, sequiturque merentes, Sed vaga per cunctos nullo discrimine fertur.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

His mind was so occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty's counsel, who tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some movements of maternal affection towards the child.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

it must have been a very fortunate speculation, of which the returns could not only repay the enormous expense at which the money was thus borrowed for carrying it on, but afford, besides, a good surplus profit to the projector.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

de Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was not of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others that allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous syllable, but which was so real that everything, even to the fiery little spot at the corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her subjection to the laws of life, as in a transformation scene on the stage a crease in the dress of a fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger, indicate the material presence of a living actress before our eyes, whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking merely at a projection of limelight from a lantern.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

If Lily recalled this early emotion it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

So that a man may say on one side, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own opinion, is to scatter and sow division, and, as it were, to lend a hand to augment it, there being no legal impediment or restraint to stop or hinder their career; but, on the other side, a man may also say, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own opinion, is to mollify and appease them by facility and toleration, and to dull the point which is whetted and made sharper by singularity, novelty, and difficulty:
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

and then he patted the heads of his dogs, reproving their exuberant expression of attachment, with—“Down, Music; down, Chance!”
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

At the same time it is impossible not to recognize that each example renders in a graphic manner the organization of a tribe.
— from The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical Systems by Zelia Nuttall

According to a third, he, reduced to extremities, entered into negotiations with Sapor; when 101 the Persian king declined to treat with envoys, he appeared personally in the enemy’s camp, and was perfidiously made a prisoner.
— from The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2 by Theodor Mommsen

But mere rest, which in course of time restores the exhausted earth, is often not equally efficient in restoring the exhausted mind; nor does mere rest, even were it a specific in the case, lie within the reach of the periodic writer.
— from Leading Articles on Various Subjects by Hugh Miller

Now that an unspoken, half-formed resolution to free herself was in her mind, she realized that every extravagance like this ride, these gorgeous rooms, sank her deeper into helpless indebtedness to Marshall Haney.
— from Money Magic: A Novel by Hamlin Garland

The soul of the Blackfoot never returns to earth, except to forewarn his friends of their approaching dissolution.
— from Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 by James Athearn Jones

Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most [56] preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen.
— from Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives with an account of an attempt made by the Church of the United Brethren, to convert them to Christianity by Johann Gottfried Haensel

It may have been because they were now frequently acting on the defensive, or it may have been from an improvement in their fire, or it may have come from the more desperate mood of the burghers, but in any case the fact remains that every encounter diminished the small reserves of the Boers rather than the ample forces of their opponents.
— from The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle

Rather the extraordinary eloquence of the earlier and greater dramatists, and in particular of the greatest, bred a cultus of conventional rhetoric and declamation in which the power and passion of the masters were lost.
— from The Evolution of States by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

In June of this year President Grant revoked the order, and in the autumn a commission was sent out "to visit these Indians, with a view to secure their permanent settlement on the reservation, their early entrance on a civilized life, and to adjust the difficulties then existing between them and the settlers."
— from A Century of Dishonor A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes by Helen Hunt Jackson

The coxswain, who stated that his name was Cregeen, and that he was a Manxman, seemed to regret the entire expedition.
— from The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett