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Can ye ever surpass the elephant in bulk or the bull in strength?
— from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Tis certain from the Author’s Words, that when it was first published, which was in Latin and Hungary, or in Latin and High-Dutch; every where one word answer’d to another over-against it: This might have been observ’d in our English Translation, which wou’d have fully answer’d the design of COMENIUS, and have made the Book much more useful: But Mr. Hoole, (whether out of too much scrupulousness to disturb the Words in some places from the order they were in, or not sufficiently considering the Inconveniences of having the Latin and English so far asunder) has made them so much disagree, that a Boy has sometimes to seek 7 or 8 lines off for the corresponding Word; which is no small trouble to Young Learners who are at first equally unacquainted with all Words, in a Language they are strangers to, except it be such as have Figures of Reference, or are very like in sound; and thus may perhaps, innocently enough join an Adverb in one Tongue, to a Noun in the other; whence may xxix appear the Necessity of the Translation’s being exactly literal, and the two Languages fairly answering one another, Line for Line.
— from The Orbis Pictus by Johann Amos Comenius
Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark!
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf
And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!”
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Let us not propose to ourselves so floating and wavering an end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public approbation follow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends upon fortune, we have no reason sooner to expect it by any other way than that.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne
Oaths flew like hailstones, and every now and then there came forth such an explosion as I thought was sure to end in blows.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
And he said unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ”
— from Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3) by Augustus Hopkins Strong
If so, the experimentalist is bound to reply that he is as willing, and as unwilling, to be welcomed to the ranks of intellectualism as to those of anti-intellectualism.
— from Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by George H. Mead
Henry IV. felt the force of the objection that existed to his title, and he sought to evade it by pretending to found his claim to the crown on descent from Edmund of Lancaster, whom he assumed to have been the elder brother of Edward I.; but no weight was attached to this plea by his contemporaries, who saw in him a monarch created by conquest and by Parliamentary action.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various
But even so their estimate is based on the social and humanitarian side of the work, and not on the spiritual phase of their service.
— from Ports of Entry: Missionary Herald by Council of Women for Home Missions
Not without good and sufficient reason, they mistrusted the bourgeois statesmen and believed that some of the most influential among them were imperialists, actuated by a desire for territorial expansion, especially the annexation of Constantinople, and that they were committed to various secret treaties entered into by the old régime with England, France, and Italy.
— from Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy by John Spargo
" All varieties of cultivated oats seem to elaborate it, but they do so in very different degrees.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 by Various
Philosophy has enough to do with what really forms the subject-matter and contents of its own province, without seeking to enlarge it by any extraneous addition.
— from The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures by Friedrich von Schlegel
In the wide realms of space the earth is but as a [Pg 532]
— from The Story of the Heavens by Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
We have kept still about the piracy that has been going on in the Bible because people who are better than we are have seemed to endorse it, but now we are sick of it, and if there is going to be an annual clerical picnic to cut gashes in the Bible and stick new precepts and examples on where they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our old Bible where the critters can’t get at it and throw the first book agent down stairs head first that tries to shove off on to us one of these new-fangled, go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern improvements, and hell left out.
— from Peck's Compendium of Fun Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite Humorist by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck
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