Note.—Though this be so, no one will endeavour to hate anything, or to be affected with pain, for the sake of enjoying this greater pleasure; that is, no one will desire that he should be injured, in the hope of recovering from the injury, nor long to be ill for the sake of getting well.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

The haughty sullenness of her countenance and manner, and the ostentatious extravagance of her dress, for she had not yet adopted the Venetian habit, were strikingly contrasted by the beauty, modesty, sweetness and simplicity of Emily, who observed, with more attention than pleasure, the party around her.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

[131] successor of Erebus, that ancient primeval divinity after whom these realms were called.
— from Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E. M. Berens

But the nature of the assay is thus: the piece of gold that goes into the furnace twelve ounces, if it comes out again eleven ounces, and the piece of silver which goes in twelve and comes out again eleven and two pennyweight, are just of the alloy of the standard of England.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who would profess to have had a liberal education?
— from The Republic by Plato

The life of a man is a double series—a series of effects produced in him by the rest of the world, and a series of effects produced in that world by him.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho' he be in society and a fellow subject.
— from Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

An enormous battery was masked by sacks of earth at the spot where there now stands what is called the “Museum of Waterloo.”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

But the essential phase was to place the transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully later.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

He agreed to it, but with so quiet a “Yes,” as inclined her almost to doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could be thought only ordinarily gifted with it.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

His description of Staffa is one of the most beautiful in English verse: “Where, as to shame the temples decked By skill of earthly architect, Nature herself, it seemed would raise A minster to her Maker’s praise!
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, December 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

The principal measures of the present Administration, such as the Taxation Acts and the establishment of the Village Settlements and of the Produce Export Department, may be said to be the joint product of the Liberal and Labour Parties, and may be regarded as an example of the policy pursued by a pure democracy in the face of financial depression, dislocation of trade, and widespread scarcity of employment.
— from Australasian Democracy by Henry de Rosenbach Walker

And her instinct's right, in spite of everything.
— from The Pretty Lady by Arnold Bennett

45 I deplore a system of education which does not enable people to understand Wagner, and as the result of which Schopenhauer sounds harsh and discordant in our ears .
— from We Philologists Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume 8 by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

8.--I have for a long time felt so depressed in spirit, and so inwardly stripped of every appearance of good, that I have often secretly had to say with tried Job, "O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me!" 16 th .--Death and darkness are still the covering of my poor mind, and I am ashamed to acknowledge that I have for months past sat meeting after meeting a victim to the baneful consequences of wandering thoughts, scarcely being able to recollect myself so much as to ask excuse of Him who sees in secret.
— from Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel by John Yeardley

By the side of Emily, whose cheek had regained the rose, and whose lip had won back its smiles, sat Horace Fleming.
— from A Whim, and Its Consequences Collection of British Authors Vol. CXIV by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

"Beggin' yer pardon, Misther Daney an' not m'anin' the least offinse in life, but—I know a lot about that young man—yis, an' the young leddy, too—that divil a sowl on earth knows or is goin' to find out.
— from Kindred of the Dust by Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne

Here the premier, with a tact that nobody could be duped by, but every one could admire, stripped Lord Vargrave's unlucky sentences of every syllable that could give offence to any one; and left the pointed epigrams and vehement denunciations a most harmless arrangement of commonplace.
— from Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 03 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron