Not that so sweet a disposition and so sound a nature could ever go very wrong even among the great visiting authorities who agreed that the Boffins were 'charmingly vulgar' (which for certain was not their own case in saying so), but that when she made a slip on the social ice on which all the children of Podsnappery, with genteel souls to be saved, are required to skate in circles, or to slide in long rows, she inevitably tripped Miss Bella up (so that young lady felt), and caused her to experience great confusion under the glances of the more skilful performers engaged in those ice-exercises.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Tom Paine has triumphed over Edmund Burke; and the swine are now courted electors.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

—These silent, gloomy, and evil men possess a peculiar something which you cannot dispute with them—an [pg 247] uncommon and strange enjoyment in the dolce far niente ; a sunset and evening rest, such as none can enjoy but a heart which has been too often devoured, lacerated, and poisoned by the passions.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of the society, and never can exceed that proportion.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

And this body will be beautiful if the lines which compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

"Everybody speculates and no commodity escapes from the speculating rage.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

“Of course I don’t envy Serpuhovskoy and never could envy him; but his advancement shows me that one has only to watch one’s opportunity, and the career of a man like me may be very rapidly made.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

To prove that the “mantle of the Elizabethan poets seems to have fallen upon Mr. Stephens” ( Opinions , p. 11), that the “Hungarian Daughter” is quite as good as Knowles’s best plays ( Id. p. 4, in two places ), that “it is equal to Goethe” ( Id. p. 11), that “in after years the name of Mr. S. will be amongst those which have given light and glory to their country” ( Id. p. 10); to prove, in short, the truth of a hundred other laudations collected and printed by this modest author, we shall quote a few passages from his play, and illustrate his genius by pointing out their beauties—an office much needed, particularly by certain dullards, the magazine of whose souls are not combustible enough to take fire at the electric sparks shot forth up out of the depths of George Stephens’s unfathomable genius!
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete by Various

Off on a hillside near each little settlement a naked cross extends its arms.
— from The New North by Agnes Deans Cameron

"His own diet was spare and not curious, except in public treatments, which were constantly given the Monday in every week to all the officers in the army not below a captain, when he used to dine with them.
— from London in Modern Times or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. by Unknown

These plans also assign duties to the supporting services such as naval communications, etc.
— from Sound Military Decision by Naval War College (U.S.)

In company with his brother Louis, now a sub-lieutenant of artillery, he set sail on the 3rd March 1795, and came near to being captured, two of the ships carrying the soldiers falling prey to the “ravening wolves of the sea,” as Napoleon called English sailors.
— from The Story of Napoleon by Harold Wheeler

Farming is their true vocation, they say, and nothing could ever tempt them back.
— from Thieves' Wit: An Everyday Detective Story by Hulbert Footner

My second was beautifully dressed—all after one of the Magaseens, and quite unlike any body else—and somehow or other—I dont know whether it was the whet or what—but part of her close tumbled off; however the Bows which was about thought it was one of her sleeves, and nobody cared except her husband Mounsheer, who was quite in a bustle at loosing anything, and would make her tell him all about it, because he was terrified at seeing her so very much reduced in figger in so short a space of time—Mounsheer got it back from one of the Artillery Bumbardeers which was in the garden to watch the river for fear it should get dry—howsoever there was plenty of water this time.
— from The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook by Theodore Edward Hook

But now the plot thickens, for the images impressed upon our memory by the outer stimuli are not restricted to the mere time- and space-relations, in which they originally came, but revive in various manners (dependent on the intricacy of the brain-paths and the instability of the tissue thereof), and form secondary combinations such as the forms of judgment , which, taken per se , are not congruent either with the forms in which reality exists or in those in which experiences befall us, but which may nevertheless be explained by the way in which experiences befall in a mind gifted with memory, expectation, and the possibility of feeling doubt, curiosity, belief, and denial.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2) by William James

Segnour, ajudo nosto Causo, E reviéuren E t'amaren." Pg 203 Lord, we desire to become men; thou canst set us free!
— from Frédéric Mistral Poet and Leader in Provence by Charles Alfred Downer