To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:——In short there is no end of it;——for my own part, I declare I have been at it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,—and am not yet born:—I have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you when it happen’d, but not 64 how ;—so that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

(*22) Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

It is instead of a wedding dinner for his daughter, whom I saw in palterly clothes, nothing new but a bracelet that her servant had given her, and ugly she is, as heart can wish.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Activity!—doing something, if possible creating something, at any rate learning something—how fortunate it is that men cannot exist without that!
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

May I never stir, if whatever was lapped up in them was not immediately corrupted, rotten, and spoiled; incense, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, wax, cassia, rhubarb, tamarinds, all drugs and spices, were lost without exception.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

The garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day; moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs from spray to spray.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Here, as in that Commixture of the Four Elements did the Anarch Old, has an august Assembly spread its pavilion; curtained by the dark infinite of discords; founded on the wavering bottomless of the Abyss; and keeps continual hubbub.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

For this, this only favour let me sue, If pity can to conquer’d foes be due: Refuse it not; but let my body have The last retreat of humankind, a grave.
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

The Story of Fidgety Philip "Let me see if Philip can Be a little gentleman; Let me see if he is able To sit still for once at table": Thus Papa bade Phil behave; And Mamma looked very grave.
— from Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures by Heinrich Hoffmann

But whether your ways or mine are more supportable is perhaps clear to the gods, for among men there is no one capable of arbitrating in our disagreement.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

[15] There is no direct evidence of this being part of the worship of the tabernacle, but we know it to have been part of the Temple worship and as hymns are common in ancient rituals our statement is probably correct.
— from A Manual for Teaching Biblical History by Eugene Kohn

It would be a long and complicated task to sift, in [pg cciv] these ill-digested but profound suggestions, the real meaning from the formal statement.
— from Hegel's Philosophy of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The former supposition is possibly correct, but the latter is not probable, in view of the well-known facts of telepathy.
— from The Law of Psychic Phenomena A working hypothesis for the systematic study of hypnotism, spiritism, mental therapeutics, etc. by Thomson Jay Hudson

Does it state its problem clearly, so that everyone can comprehend it, develop its angle absorbingly, and end, not merely stop, with complete satisfaction?
— from Writing for Vaudeville by Brett Page

The dinner was good, and very handsomely served, with attendance enough, both in the hall below—where the door was wide open at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the cold—and at table; some being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in plain clothes.
— from Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This was the amiable John Henry Hobart, afterward Bishop of New York, a man who was deeply and deservedly beloved, and for whom Mrs. Seton in particular cherished a filial regard.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870 by Various

That woodchuck did so is practically certain.
— from The American Language A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

He saw, as astronomers to-day see, that heat cannot be produced without expenditure of force; and that the sun is probably cooling, even though scarcely perceptibly for ages to come.
— from Famous Men of Science by Sarah Knowles Bolton

I believe most any one that lives where Ginseng will grow could make up a small bed or two in their garden and by planting large roots and shading it properly, could make it a nice picture.
— from Ginseng and Other Medicinal Plants A Book of Valuable Information for Growers as Well as Collectors of Medicinal Roots, Barks, Leaves, Etc. by A. R. (Arthur Robert) Harding