Well-being, as you understand it—is certainly not a goal; it seems to us an END; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible—and makes his destruction DESIRABLE!
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“It is almost needless to say that, upon coming to a due sense of my situation, and emerging from the terror which had absorbed every faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly directed to the contemplation of the general physical appearance of the moon.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them?
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

He not only recovered from his illness; but, because of its sleep-dispelling qualities, he sanctioned the use of the drink among the dervishes "that they might spend the night in prayers or other religious exercises with more attention and presence of mind.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

But that interpreter, again, must implicitly contain the meaning of the universe within itself; and these signs are really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within itself.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

As I in no way share the unwarlike views of my deceased friend Galiani, I have no fear whatever of saying something beforehand with the view of conjuring in some way the cause of wars.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

This incredible defect, however improbable it may seem to us now, must have existed, if we take into consideration the circumstances surrounding those beings, whom I scarcely dare to call human!
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

And so they unconsciously find themselves as in truth pulse-beats of the whole system, and themselves the whole system.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
— 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

In order to be beautiful, it is not enough for a work of art to offer us delightful colors and lines and sounds; it must also have a meaning—it must speak to us, tell us something.
— from The Principles of Aesthetics by De Witt H. (De Witt Henry) Parker

I can’t seem to understand it at all.
— from The Carleton Case by Ellery H. (Ellery Harding) Clark

The weather seems nearly always to clear up about sunset, and its summit then usually towers far above the clouds in a clear sky.
— from Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921 by A. F. R. (Alexander Frederick Richmond) Wollaston

To the early Saxons those unseen powers were an everyday reality.
— from The Old English Herbals by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

The telephone was on a small table under the portrait of the greatest grandfather.
— from The Trumpeter Swan by Temple Bailey

To show the unreasonableness of it, consider, 1.
— from The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2 by Stephen Charnock

Paul believed that the weapons of his warfare were mighty enough to cast down the strongest of all strongholds in which men shut themselves up against the humbling Gospel of salvation by the mercy of God.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy. by Alexander Maclaren

It was a conception essentially in keeping with the grave solemnity, the uniform movement, and the proud dignity of Roman life, that departed generations should continue to walk, as it were, corporeally among the living, and that, when a burgess weary of labours and of honours was gathered to his fathers, these fathers themselves should appear in the Forum to receive him among their number.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen