Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.
— from The Two Brothers by Honoré de Balzac

Timmie and the little boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"
— from Sunlight Patch by Credo Fitch Harris

And finally, upon the man whose organic disposition makes him anti-social, upon Lombroso's born criminal, society can have no educative effect whatever.
— from Morals and the Evolution of Man by Max Simon Nordau