I firmly believed that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

The word happiness has not the definiteness or the sacredness of ‘truth’ and ‘right’; it does not equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the conscience of mankind.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The word happiness has not the definiteness or the sacredness of 'truth' and 'right'; it does not equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the conscience of mankind.
— from The Republic by Plato

This is another declaration upon which I am previously certain of the incredulity of many of my readers, who obstinately continue to judge me by themselves, although they cannot but have seen, in the course of my life, a thousand internal affections which bore no resemblance to any of theirs.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He sent me over one Sunday in the care of my brother.
— from Rizal's own story of his life by José Rizal

The king also, as I was told, ordered a thousand pounds a week to be distributed in four parts: one quarter to the city and liberty of Westminster; one quarter or part among the inhabitants of the Southwark side of the water; one quarter to the liberty and parts within of the city, exclusive of the city within the walls; and one-fourth part to the suburbs in the county of Middlesex, and the east and north parts of the city.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers and others of the finest professions.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

Above all, he dwelt upon what he had seen in the cave of Montesinos; for though Master Pedro's ape had told him that of those things part was true, part false, he clung more to their truth than to their falsehood, the very reverse of Sancho, who held them all to be downright lies.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

But Madame C—— is at variance with her husband on my account, as she is the cause of my quarrel with my father.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

om, and his bosom favourite to have the halter, but in Scripture, in the case of Mordecai and Haman.'
— from Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography by W. (William) Stebbing

Giving light out of smoke, eh? as they say in the classics," observed Mr. Bagges.
— from International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 9, August 26, 1850 by Various

“Thus, the wing of a bat is a most abnormal structure in the class of mammals; but the rule would not apply here, because the whole group of bats possesses wings; it would apply only [239] if some one species had wings developed in a remarkable manner in comparison with the other species of the same genus.”
— from Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement by Edward Clodd

[423] A knowledge of the antecedents of the master-class will aid the reader to a more accurate conception of the character of the institution of slavery in the colony of Maryland.
— from History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams

There was a brief pause--for St. Real would not trust his voice with a reply--and the Duke, after having dismissed the officers by whom he had been surrounded, proceeded: "I trust, Monsieur de St. Real, that you know enough of him who speaks to you to believe, even without my saying it, that Charles of Mayenne is utterly incapable of such an act as that by which my safe-conduct was violated in your instance.
— from One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Mr. Verrill and Professor Meldola made the same suggestion in the case of medusae and other phosphorescent marine organisms ( Nature , vol.
— from Darwinism (1889) An exposition of the theory of natural selection, with some of its applications by Alfred Russel Wallace

“I have always dreamed,” he mouthed fiercely, “of a band of men absolute in their resolve to discard all scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from the taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad