In order to lay more stress on the contrast between elementary species and retrograde varieties, it should be stated at once, that the first are considered to have originated from their parent-form in a progressive way.
— from Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation by Hugo de Vries

In such a region, vindictiveness in social punishments must be going out, and Christ-like views of human guilt and infirmity beginning to prevail.
— from How to Observe: Morals and Manners by Harriet Martineau

There was a certain wild woodsiness and solitude about Rainbow Valley, in spite of its nearness to the village, which endeared it to the children of Ingleside.
— from Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Beyond lay the sea, like a flat pavement of sapphire, scarcely a ripple varying its sunny surface, that stretched out leagues away till it blended with the softened azure of the sky.
— from Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 1 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

For as, whatever the perfectness of the educational system, there must remain infinite differences between the natures and capacities of men; and these differing natures are generally rangeable under the two qualities of lordly (or tending towards rule, construction, and harmony) and servile (or tending towards misrule, destruction, and discord); and, since the lordly part is only in a state of profitableness while ruling, and the servile only in a state of redeemableness while serving, the whole health of the state depends on the manifest separation of these two elements of its mind: for, if the servile part be not separated and rendered visible in service, it mixes with and corrupts the entire body of the state; and if the lordly part be not distinguished, and set to rule, it is crushed and lost, being turned to no account, so that the rarest qualities of the nation are all given to it in vain.
— from Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy by John Ruskin