When an actor, hide-bound in theatrical traditions and prejudices, tries to read simple straightforward monologue: "To be or not to be," not at all simply, but with an incomprehensible and inevitable hiss and convulsions over his whole body, or when he tries to convince me that Chazky, who is always talking to fools and is in love with a fool, is a very clever man and that "The Sorrows of Knowledge" is not a boring play,—then I get from the stage a breath of the same old routine that exasperated me forty years ago when I was regaled with classical lamentation and beating on the breast.
— from The Bet, and other stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher.
— from The Time Machine by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

We should consider whether the laws of states ought not to have the character of loving and wise parents, rather than of tyrants and masters, who command and threaten, and, after writing their decrees on walls, go their ways; and whether, in discoursing of laws, we should not take the gentler view of them which may or may not be attainable—at any rate, we will show our readiness to entertain such a view, and be prepared to undergo whatever may be the result.
— from Laws by Plato

It is evident, that even different simple ideas may have a similarity or resemblance to each other; nor is it necessary, that the point or circumstance of resemblance shoud be distinct or separable from that in which they differ.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

And, indeed, this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sentences of relative time express contemporaneous, antecedent, and subsequent action like corresponding indicative sentences, with the appropriate sequence: as, vereor, nē, dum minuere velim labōrem, augeam , Leg.
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

Lastly, looking not to any one time, but at all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Flaccus, a Roman, ℞ 372 Flamingo, ℞ 220 , 231-2 Flavors and spices, often referred to, especially in text; instances of careful flavoring, ℞ 15 , 276-77 .
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

The moon spun once round the earth as I noted this; and I perceived clearly the motion of Mars in his orbit.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

It is well-disposed and desires to mend matters; it undertakes the suppression of robbery, theft, embezzlement,
— from The Modern Regime, Volume 1 by Hippolyte Taine

"Know ye, that John Woods, assignee of Hugh Collins, of White county, Illinois, having deposited, at the general land office, a certificate of the register of the land office at Shawneetown; whereby it appears, that full payment has been made, for the south-east quarter of section nineteen; in township, two south; of range, ten east; containing 160 acres of the lands directed to be sold at Shawneetown, by the acts of Congress relative to the disposal of the public lands in Illinois.
— from Hulme's Journal, 1818-19; Flower's Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, 1819; Flower's Letters from the Illinois, 1820-21; and Woods's Two Years' Residence, 1820-21 by John Woods

Many were the appeals made to the old herbalist to reveal his strangely-acquired knowledge, but Abraham remained sternly obdurate, remarking to each of his questioners— 'Yo'll know soon enough, mebbi.'
— from Goblin Tales of Lancashire by James Bowker

It is rather a severe way in which to characterize the modern preacher, who, take him on the whole, deserves credit for what I regard as a difficult task, the presentation of some fresh subject of religious thought every Sunday all the year round."
— from Two Knapsacks: A Novel of Canadian Summer Life by John Campbell

It was a custom for young Indian women to invite some older relative to escort them to the public feasts.
— from American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa

I was told that the reason why we were made over helplessly to such caterers as those at North Platte and Sterling for our food was, that the custom of passengers is almost the only source of revenue the "eating-houses" along the line can depend upon.
— from Sinners and Saints A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons by Phil Robinson

On the revival of learning, the students, who had been formed in the schools of Athens and Rome, disdained their Barbarian ancestors; and a long period elapsed before patient labor could provide the requisite materials to satisfy, or rather to excite, the curiosity of more enlightened times.
— from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 3 by Edward Gibbon

The best way of effecting this was thought to be the removal of the inhabitants who paid rent or not as it suited them, and in place of a few hundred of these to secure one responsible tenant, even if he paid much less per acre than the native peasant.
— from Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. by Bernard Henry Becker

Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of races, the experiment now in progress will develop it.
— from The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Edwin Percy Whipple

It would appear, therefore, that if it is possible for the intellect to traverse by means of a study of kosmic symbolism, used as a standard of reference, the entire [Pg 212] length of the bridge which engages the antipodes into an eternal unity, something may be gained in the way of a more definite and clearer understanding of the essential nature of space in its relation to kosmogenesis.
— from The Mystery of Space A Study of the Hyperspace Movement in the Light of the Evolution of New Psychic Faculties and an Inquiry into the Genesis and Essential Nature of Space by Robert T. Browne