It is judgement maim'd and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature; and must be driven To find out practices of cunning hell, Why this should be.
— from Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare

This is recognized in such common expressions as "she was covered with confusion."
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

The condition of the air, sometimes foggy and not pellucid, at another time particularly clear, makes an enormous difference, and statements whether about distance, size, colors, etc., are completely unreliable.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

LOCAL LEGENDS OF SOUTH CAROLINA As the Cherokee withdrew from all of South Carolina except a small strip in the extreme west as early as 1777, the memory of the old legends localized within the state has completely faded from the tribe.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present and hitherto condition of the United States, with reference to their future, and the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below all surfaces, and subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisites of a leading nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly wealth and products on the largest and most varied scale, common education and intercommunication, and, in general, the passing through of just the stages and crudities we have passed or are passing through in the United States.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

ANT: Neat, workmanlike, artistic, handy, skillful, clever, expert, adroit, dexterous.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

The monuments have hitherto been so carelessly examined and restored, that it is difficult to arrive at anything like certainty with regard to the details of their structure.
— from A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by James Fergusson

Her value, the tremendous value of an unsmirched virtue, a woman's greatest asset in a world of desire and barter, became to her a possession she cherished above her jewels, above the money she could earn and save and the greater sums she dreamed of earning or winning by any means—all means but one.
— from The Black Pearl by Woodrow, Wilson, Mrs.

The oldest specimen in the Wallace Collection dates from about 143 [Pg 324] 0, in which the axe-blade possesses a straight cutting edge, and the spike is superseded by a strong tapering blade.
— from British and Foreign Arms & Armour by Charles Henry Ashdown

Hab. —Central and Southern California; especially about the San Bernardino region; not plentiful.
— from The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits by Mary Elizabeth Parsons

He was a good-looking—even handsome—man, with refined and regular features, a smiling, complacent expression, and a small, well-trimmed moustache.
— from Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe by William Le Queux

A mind and character incomprehensible indeed, if corruption, lassitude, listlessness, and fear would not explain the existence of everything that is abnormal and pitiable about human nature in a feeble, cold, and selfish creature, excited, and at the same time worn out, by the business and the pleasures o
— from A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4 by François Guizot

The gist of their information was that there were large waters, high mountains, and plenty, plenty, wild black fellow; they said the wild blacks were very big and fat, and had hair growing, as some said, all down their backs; while others asserted that the hair grew all over their bodies, and that they eat pickaninnies, and sometimes came eastward and killed any of the members of the Charlotte tribe that they could find, and carried off all the women they could catch.
— from Australia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876 by Ernest Giles

[4] Do you think a nation with such conditions existing at its very heart ought to be called a civilized nation?
— from The Common Sense of Socialism A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg by John Spargo

If she could escape a cynic either in books or in society, she invariably did so.
— from Other Things Being Equal by Emma Wolf

The blunt fact was that with the reinstitution of selective service in 1948 the Army was receiving more black recruits—especially those in the lower mental categories—than a segregated system could easily absorb.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor