One great evil, at least, that "the Fall" brought upon the race of man, is, that human beings are born into the world with the spiritual person all submerged by the animal nature; or, to use Paul's figure, the spirit is enslaved by the flesh; and such is the extent of this that many, perhaps most, men are born and grow up and die, and never know that they have any souls; and finally there arise, as there have arisen through all the ages, just such philosophers as Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Spencer, who in substance deny that men are spiritual persons at all, who say that the highest knowledge is a generalization in the Understanding, a form of a knowledge common to man and the brutes, and that "the highest achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally."
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

So home to dinner and to work again, and so till dinner, where W. Howe come and dined with me, and staid and read in my Lord Cooke upon his chapter of perjury again, which pleased me, and so parted, and I to my office, and there made an end of the books of Propositions, which did please me mightily to hear read, they being excellently writ and much to the purpose, and yet so as I think I shall make good use of his defence of our present constitution.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Luigi, who read it to himself and said to Tom— “Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll.”
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

What property we had, we were allowed to sell and realise in money; but none of our play debts were paid to us: and all my hopes of the Countess Ida were thus at an end.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

If a kind man had happened to slip a revolver into my hand I would have put a bullet through my head gladly.
— from The Bet, and other stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

I eat and drink and sleep and rejoice in my grandchildren, and say my prayers and want nothing more.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

On the nervous system it acts as a pleasant stimulant and restorative, its moderate use not being followed by depression.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson

My experience in Saratoga had revealed to me the want of suggestiveness and resource in men in general.
— from My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year by George Francis Train

Yet in the romantic and chivalrous annals of the House of Vasa, scarcely any reign is more remarkable than that of the sovereign to whom Christina ceded the throne.
— from A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. by Bulstrode Whitlocke

No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; But he, the flower at head and soil at root, Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.
— from Poems — Volume 3 by George Meredith

I recollect, however, that my prime adviser, thinking me, I suppose, a great deal too shy and retiring in my manner, entreated me to put up my boots and to soil the Governor’s divan, in order to inspire respect and strike terror.
— from Eothen; Or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East by Alexander William Kinglake

Forty tons of manure per acre is a very moderate application for garden crops, and this amount should be applied annually, even on soils already rich, if maximum crops of vegetables are to be grown.
— from The Vegetable Garden: What, When, and How to Plant by Anonymous

not troubling to ask what the wine was, but taking it for granted that for such a report it must needs be good of its class.
— from The Spirit of the Links by Henry Leach