Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say in my poor mother's country: Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails, And dirty sluts in plenty, Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses When the heart is one-and-twenty.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Our social self-seeking , in turn, is carried on directly through our amativeness and friendliness, our desire to please and attract notice and admiration, our emulation and jealousy, our love of glory, influence, and power, and indirectly through whichever of the material self-seeking impulses prove serviceable as means to social ends.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

"Shall I play some of those little melodies of Mozart's which you used to like so much?"
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The military virtue of an Army is, therefore, one of the most important moral powers in War, and where it is wanting, we either see its place supplied by one of the others, such as the great superiority of generalship or popular enthusiasm, or we find the results not commensurate with the exertions made.—How much that is great, this spirit, this sterling worth of an army, this refining of ore into the polished metal, has already done, we see in the history of the Macedonians under Alexander, the Roman legions under Cesar, the Spanish infantry under Alexander Farnese, the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, the Prussians under Frederick the Great, and the French under Buonaparte.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

I left him and addressing myself to a sharp Italian page said that I would give two ducats to the valet who would furnish me with the names of the Cologne ladies who were in Bonn, and of the gentlemen who had accompanied them.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Tie the stick in position so it will not untwist.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America

As early as 1734, while temporarily settled in Georgia, they had striven to bring some knowledge of the Christian religion to the Indians immediately about Savannah, including perhaps some stray Cherokee.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Of the orthodox systems, by far the most important are the pantheistic Vedānta, which, as continuing the doctrines of the Upanishads, has been the dominant philosophy of Brahmanism since the end of the Vedic period, and the atheistic Sānkhya, which, for the first time in the history of the world, asserted the complete independence of the human mind and attempted to solve its problems solely by the aid of reason.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

The young man now hastened to fasten the chains in the ground, for which strong iron posts several fathoms long had been prepared.
— from The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country by W. F. (William Forsell) Kirby

Franklin was one of its Trustees for more than forty years, and had, he says in the Autobiography , the very great pleasure of seeing a number of the youth, who had received their education in it, distinguished by their improved abilities, serviceable in public stations and ornaments to their country.
— from Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2) A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings by Wiliam Cabell Bruce

The taste of authentic mint julep recalled the only Kentucky Derby he'd seen in person, shortly before the war; a magnificent chestnut filly named Lady Jess had won.
— from Fearful Symmetry: A Terran Empire novel by Ann Wilson

With added facilities for depositing small savings in postal savings banks, the advantage would be still more widely [pg 292] felt, and the general economy in the use of both earnings and capital would be promoted.
— from Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life by Geo. T. (George Thompson) Fairchild

Sure some Ill Power 's at hand—Soft!
— from Are these Things So? (1740) The Great Man's Answer to Are These things So: (1740) by James Miller

But this, we say, is physical science, and not history.
— from Myths and Myth-Makers Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology by John Fiske

During the first two years of his reign James lightened their burdens, in accordance with the promises of his first speech in Parliament, "so much as time, occasion, or law should permit."
— from The American Nation: A History — Volume 1: European Background of American History, 1300-1600 by Edward Potts Cheyney