We may perhaps entangle our friends in their own words, and force them for the moment to say what they do not mean, and what it is not in their natures to think; but the bent bow will spring back, perhaps somewhat sharply, and we shall get little thanks for our labour.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

above each leaf a Small Short branch protrudes, Supporting a tissue of four or five Small leaves of the Same appearance of those discribed.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

A hideous notion struck me: how powerful I should be possessing such an instrument!
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Though both the gold and silver mines of America exceeded in fertility all those which had ever been known before, the fertility of the silver mines had, it seems, been proportionally still greater than that of the gold ones.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

There were one or two green fabrics of varying shades; but Poirot shook his head over them all.
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

His words were of comfort, and that only: there shall be provision sent to Paris, if provision is in the world; grains shall circulate free as air; millers shall grind, or do worse, while their millstones endure; and nothing be left wrong which a Restorer of French Liberty can right.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which the Imperium Romanum gave—this faith is NOT that sincere, austere slave-faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity, it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In the mean Time the Drummer, the Captain's Equipage, was very loud, that none of the Captain's things should be placed so as to be spoiled; upon which his Cloake-bag was fixed in the Seat of the Coach: And
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

Beringe , sb. birth, behaviour, bearing, C2, S; berynge , PP; see Beren .
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

We had come to this blank space of the earth by slow but progressive stages.
— from My Attainment of the Pole Being the Record of the Expedition That First Reached the Boreal Center, 1907-1909. With the Final Summary of the Polar Controversy by Frederick Albert Cook

In 1870 the soldiers of Paris died, as of old, of hospital gangrene; and when, in 1871, the French surgeon Alphonse Guerin, stimulated by Pasteur's studies, conceived the idea of dressing wounds with cotton in the hope of keeping germs from entering them, he was quite unaware that a British contemporary had preceded him by a full decade in this effort at prevention and had made long strides towards complete success.
— from A History of Science — Volume 4 by Edward Huntington Williams

[357] The conditions of life and peculiarities of building, etc., in the caves and cliffs, then in the round towns, have been commented on at some length in previous pages, and sufficiently described to render intelligible a presentation of this linguistic and additional evidence in regard to derivation from that direction; but it remains for me to sketch, as well as I can in brief, the more significant of such characteristics of the primitive Yuman house and village life as seem to bear on the additional linguistic and other evidence of derivation also from the opposite or Rio Colorado direction, for both clews should be presented side by side, if only for the sake of contrast.
— from Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448 by Frank Hamilton Cushing

A short but profound silence succeeded, then a number of questions were asked, the history of the poor child was told, every one felt moved with compassion, and no one would bid again for the bird, which was knocked down to Raphael for ten-pence.
— from The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; the Boy and the Book; and Crystal Palace by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

The shareholders’ money floated the concern, and paid for splendid business premises, so they began operations.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

It cannot be supposed that all these things passed unnoticed by those wakeful eyes that are ever upon the motions of such "bright, particular stars;" and as is usual in such cases, many things were known to a certainty which were not yet known to the parties themselves.
— from The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings by Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Yes, shinning before peaching,” said Herbert, astonished almost as much as he was disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment of Van Diemen to his old friend.
— from Complete Short Works of George Meredith by George Meredith

The base-board around the room should be plain, so that it may be readily cleaned.
— from Convenient Houses, With Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper by Louis H. (Louis Henry) Gibson

Within the mound the food stored is usually more or less segregated by plant species, though the stores of material of any one kind may be found in several places through the mound, and often the material is mixed.
— from Life History of the Kangaroo Rat by Walter P. (Walter Penn) Taylor