And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier shake off.
— from The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill

If it were merely a case of listening to their wishes and following their lead it would be an easy matter; but there are so many contradictions between the rights of nature and the laws of society that to conciliate them we must continually contradict ourselves.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most of the exploits which distinguished his reign were achieved by the personal valor and conduct of the emperor, insomuch that the writer of his life expresses some amazement how, in so short a time, a single man could be present in so many distant wars.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Thou never wilt stand there And see me cast out friendless to despair.
— from Medea of Euripides by Euripides

The Master said, 'Those who have done this are seven men.' CHAP.
— from The Analects of Confucius (from the Chinese Classics) by Confucius

‘It’s rather a tight fit, you see,’ he said, as they got it in a last; ‘There are so many candlesticks in the bag.’
— from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

It being Lord’s day, up and dressed and to church, thinking to have sat with Sir James Bunce to hear his daughter and her husband sing, that are so much commended, but was prevented by being invited into Coll.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

We are going to take a swim, Mr. Constantine.
— from The Sea-Gull by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Carson streets seldom look inactive on Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

There a single man can superintend the completion of half-a-dozen men’s labours at the keyboard.
— from The Romance of Modern Invention Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c. by Archibald Williams

I think any student may come and fight on these occasions, but I suppose he has to be the guest of a corps."
— from Home Life in Germany by Sidgwick, Alfred, Mrs.

Electricity is so named simply because amber—the Latin electrum —was the substance which, in the experience of the ancients, showed most conspicuously the strange property of attracting small bodies after being rubbed.
— from Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature by Edward Huntington Williams

Life isn't a merry thing anywhere,—least of all in Paris; for, look you, in modern Babylon there are so many calls for money, (which Southey called "a huge evil" everywhere,) there are so many temptations to expense, one has to keep a most cool head and a most silent heart to live in Paris and to avoid debt.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

When the Government had refused to take their arms by force, which Unionists were in their hearts hoping they would, the refusal left them powerless and discredited, save in the eyes of cinema operators, who only looked upon them as so much copy.
— from Six days of the Irish Republic A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics by Redmond-Howard, L. G., (Louis George)

As Tom talked, I seemed to hear Ulysses telling of his meeting with Agamemnon in Hades, and those terrible ghosts drinking from the blood-filled trench, and I shuddered in spite of myself; for it is almost impossible entirely to refuse credence to beliefs held with such certitude of terror across so many centuries and by such different people.
— from Pieces of Eight Being the Authentic Narrative of a Treasure Discovered in the Bahama Islands in the Year 1903 by Richard Le Gallienne