But such is the admirable position of the New World that man has no other enemy than himself; and that, in order to be happy and to be free, it suffices to seek the gifts of prosperity and the knowledge of freedom.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Well, said Gymnast, I have failed,—I will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another striking gambol as before; which done, he set his right hand thumb upon the bow of the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and upholding his whole 89 “ weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, reversing his body, and overturning it upside down, and foreside back, without touching any thing, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper—” (This can’t be fighting, said my uncle Toby.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

She sat down on the bed as usual, and I observed in a melancholy manner that she had only covered her breast because I had said I took a pleasure in seeing it.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Having come to this river he did as follows:—he appointed a place for his army and bade every man as he passed out by it place one stone in this appointed place: and when the army had performed this, then he marched away his army leaving behind great mounds of these stones.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

Behind the Palace the smoke from a high chimney mounted straight into the air, purple until it crossed the sun, where it changed to a bar of smouldering fire.
— from The King in Yellow by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

And my father preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion; one set in the mornings, all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to fighting with spades or bricks, if need were; and the other set in the afternoons, proving that Napoleon (that was another name for Bony, as we used to call him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon.
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms?
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

While Montaigne, and others no doubt, had seen in this a peculiarity of love, Stendhal saw in it love's essential characteristic—one might say, its explanation, if love were capable of being explained.
— from On Love by Stendhal

The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent individual, would insure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the duties of government.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

We are next led to ask how these myths came into existence, and how it is that the same myth meets us under various forms in literatures and among peoples widely separate in time and place.
— from The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911) Based Originally on Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" (1855) by Thomas Bulfinch

[Pg 23] FOOTNOTES: [1] Sir William Fairfax was the son of Joseph Fairfax, Esq., of Bagshot, in the county of Surrey, who died in 1783, aged 77, having served in the army previous to 1745.
— from Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville by Mary Somerville

These are all fundamentally problems of human nature, and as human nature itself is now regarded as a product of social intercourse, they are problems of sociology.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

“You must not imagine,” said I, “that all Protestants are supine; some of them appear to be filled with unbounded zeal.
— from The Romany Rye by George Borrow

Formerly the common practice was to melt it in the dry state, by heat cautiously and quickly applied, and to strain it through a piece of coarse canvas stretched across a wooden frame or ‘horse.’
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I by Richard Vine Tuson

The forests of the Murgie gradually thinned, and Francesco emerged upon a high level plateau, which to southward sloped into the Apulian plains, and on which the sun poured the whole fervor of his beams, till the earth itself seemed to beat up light.
— from The Hill of Venus by Nathan Gallizier

The sources include the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Business Korea, and the World Bank Research Observer.
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno

So I took another photograph, ate another orange, kicked the self-starter once more, and pushed on again.
— from Across America by Motor-cycle by C. K. Shepherd

The greater working always results from the greater seeing into the abstract principles from which any art or science is generated; and this same law carried up to the universal principles of Life is the law by which "the Son's" working is proportioned to his seeing the method of "the Father's" work.
— from The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental Science by T. (Thomas) Troward

Such is the avowed purpose of a Government which is in the practice of naturalizing by thousands citizens of other countries, and not only of permitting but compelling them to fight its battles against their native country.
— from U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses by United States. Presidents