For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus assume a close external resemblance; but such resemblances will not reveal—will rather tend to conceal their blood-relationship to their proper lines of descent.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

When his father had finished wringing his hands over the mischance, he sent his son to acquire a civilian education; whence it came about that Nikolai, at eighteen, found himself a student at the University of St. Petersburg.
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

You are more to me than all art can ever be.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Afar he marvels at the armour and chariots empty of their lords: their spears stand fixed in the ground, and their unyoked horses pasture at large over the plain: their life's delight in chariot and armour, their care in pasturing their sleek horses, follows them in like wise low under earth.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

Perhaps there is not, upon the whole, a single European colony in the New World in which the physical condition of the blacks is less severe than in the United States; yet the slaves still endure horrid sufferings there, and are constantly exposed to barbarous punishments.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

316.—THE AMAZONS.— solution It will be seen that only three queens have been removed from their positions on the edge of the board, and that, as a consequence, eleven squares (indicated by the black dots) are left unattacked by any queen.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

[66] When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden testifies that he told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject assumes new importance....
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

But he says that the earth is the only thing that is unchangeable, as he considers the cause to be the difference of the figures of which it is composed; for he says that the figures of the others are homogeneous; for that they are all composed equally of scalene triangles.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

It was, this authority asserts, crowded every night with men of parts.
— from Inns and Taverns of Old London by Henry C. (Henry Charles) Shelley

Once more they assumed a careworn expression, and he even wiped his face with his handkerchief, then rolled it into a ball, and rubbed it to and fro against his upper lip.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Raymond sprung lightly on his horse, grasped the standard, and with words which I could not hear (but his gestures, being their fit accompaniment, were marked by passionate energy,) he seemed to adjure their assistance and companionship; even as he spoke, the crowd receded from him.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The aeroplane approached close enough to see the signal on the turret of the tank, and signalled back that reinforcements would be sent.
— from The Boy Allies with Pershing in France; Or, Over the Top at Chateau Thierry by Clair W. (Clair Wallace) Hayes

An abiding testimony to his tremendous personal influence in the æsthetic world is the vitality and recurrence of the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions, which are steeped in his personality like a chapel in that of a saint.
— from Varied Types by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Owing to Mr. Langley’s belief that the tests of the man-carrying aerodrome must not only be made over the water, but that it was necessary that the machine be launched from a car running on a track at a considerable elevation in order to permit the machine to drop a short distance after being launched in case it was not quite up to soaring speed when launched, it was necessary that the aerodrome be so constructed that it could be readily transported to the launching track from the interior of the house-boat where it was stored.
— from Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911 by Charles M. (Charles Matthews) Manly

There are and can exist but two ways of investigating and discovering truth.
— from Novum Organum; Or, True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature by Francis Bacon

The haunting shadows fled, the sob gave way to a contented little sigh and Jerry fell asleep with the memory of Gyp's dark, roguish face in her thoughts and a consuming eagerness to have the morning come quickly.
— from Highacres by Jane Abbott

The northern frontier of Assyria was continually menaced by groups of independent hill States which would have been irresistible had they operated together against a common enemy, but were liable to be extinguished when attacked in detail.
— from Myths of Babylonia and Assyria by Donald A. (Donald Alexander) Mackenzie

In that magnificent brief lecture on Gothic Architecture, which was first spoken as a lecture at the New Gallery for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in the year 1889, and afterwards printed by the Kelmscott Press during and in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in the New Gallery, 1893, Mr. Morris traced, with lightning-like swiftness and clearness, the progress of Gothic Architecture from its first inception by the Romans in the invention of the Arch to its consummation in the exquisitely poised and traceried buildings of the close of the fifteenth century.
— from The Arts and Crafts Movement by T. J. (Thomas James) Cobden-Sanderson