And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

They were so lifelike, I thought they were angel visions which the artist had caught and bound in earthly forms.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

So little is this true that it is almost a proof against truth when sensations of pleasure influence the answer to the question “What is true?”
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Way siklib ang ámung gitrabahúan, There’s no sick leave in the company I’m working for.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

So potentially fitted for social life is the natural man, however, so manifold are the expressions that the plastic original tendencies may take, that instinct is replaced by habit, precedent, personal taboo, and good form.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

But these transformations seem to echo poetically, and often rationally, a very mystical Celtic pantheism, in which Man, regarded as having evolved upwards through all forms and conditions of existence, is at one with all creation:— I am the wind which blows o’er the sea; I am the wave of the deep; I am the bull of seven battles; I am the eagle on the rock; I am a tear of the sun; I am the fairest of plants; I am a boar for courage; I am a salmon in the water; I am a lake in the plain; I am the world of knowledge; I am the head of the battle-dealing spear; I am the god who fashions fire in the head; Who spreads light in the gathering on the mountain?
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

there is something lively in the very idea of ’em——and trust me, when I get amongst ’em——You gentry with great beards——look as grave as you will——I’ll make merry work with my button-holes—I shall have ’em all to myself—’tis a maiden subject—I shall run foul of no man’s wisdom or fine sayings in it.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

As she exhausted the amusement of spending the money these complications became more pressing, and Lily, whose mind could be severely logical in tracing the causes of her ill-luck to others, justified herself by the thought that she owed all her troubles to the enmity of Bertha Dorset.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

And sayling all this day, we spied late in the night.
— from The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 05 Central and Southern Europe by Richard Hakluyt

He came of an old and highly respectable stock located in the county of Herts., his father being for many years landlord of “The George,” at Barnet, a stage on the Great North road, through which, in the old coaching days, scores of coaches passed daily.
— from Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter by James Conway Walter

One rainy morning, while making my accustomed rounds, enveloped in rubber, I stopped to notice a blue-headed vireo, who, as I soon perceived, was sitting lazily in the top of a locust-tree, looking rather disconsolate, and ejaculating with not more than half his customary voice and emphasis, Mary Ware!—Mary Ware!
— from Birds in the Bush by Bradford Torrey

Here the ground was high and open, yet also sloping to the rear as well as the front, and its chief strength lay in the strongly-built farmsteads of St. Hubert, seated on the roadside just above Gravelotte, in those of Moscow and Leipzig, standing on the bare hill-side; and in the Bois de Genivaux, a thick wood, which filled the upper part of the Mance ravine.
— from The Campaign of Sedan: The Downfall of the Second Empire, August-September 1870 by George Hooper

She was a stout trading vessel, built for burden more than speed, but she seemed light in the water, as though she had little cargo for this voyage.
— from A Prince of Cornwall A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

At a furious pace they dashed up the slope leading to the Redan, and planted several ladders in the ditch against the wall.
— from The Battles of the British Army Being a Popular Account of All the Principal Engagements During the Last Hundred Years by Robert Melvin Blackwood

Only, my dear Raoul, but so merry a nag look to your stirrups, sit light in the saddle, since with one plunge she would hurl thee to the ceiling, if you are not careful.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

He constantly drew one and the same landscape: in the foreground were large, dishevelled trees, in the distance, a meadow, and saw-toothed mountains on the horizon.
— from A Nobleman's Nest by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Sebastopol no longer defensible, the enemy sued for peace, which was granted, and this stronghold of tyranny, dismantled and abandoned, was assumed to be converted into a haven for fishermen and traders, rather than the mighty arsenal, whence had so long issued the formidable fleets which had inspired 77 terror among weaker and neighbouring states—at least so the treaty required.
— from History of the Scottish Regiments in the British Army by Archibald K. Murray