And how much human nature loves the knowledge of its existence, and how it shrinks from being deceived, will be sufficiently understood from this fact, that every man prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to be glad in madness.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

[Pg 154] for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

“Sire,” said Villefort, “the suddenness of this event must prove to your majesty that the issue is in the hands of Providence; what your majesty is pleased to attribute to me as profound perspicacity is simply owing to chance, and I have profited by that chance, like a good and devoted servant—that’s all.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Louisa had relinquished the hand: had thought that her sister’s was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been: had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the gentleness of the other face in the room; the sweet face with the trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, by the rich dark hair.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

The series of revolutions on which I shall now briefly touch shows this even more plainly than the way (already dealt with) in which at a later date they cut their throats in the matter of machinery; for if the second of the two reformers of whom I am about to speak had had his way—or rather the way that he professed to have—the whole race would have died of starvation within a twelve-month.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the “nice parts” of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

But when the Romans made no reply about peace, but as before bade him depart from Italy and only in that event make propositions to them, and since they kept overrunning and capturing the cities in alliance with him, Frag.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

He seemed to think of nothing but how to find out new means of plaguing her: Sometimes He affected to pity her misfortune, then laughed at, abused, and mimicked her; He played her a thousand tricks, each more provoking than the other, and amused himself by telling her that her elopement must have occasioned much surprise at the Baron's.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis

I remember looking furtively every way to see if I was observed, and then emptying my pockets—truly they had not much in them—into the woman's hands.
— from The Strand Magazine, Vol. 05, Issue 26, February 1893 An Illustrated Monthly by Various

It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries—which have now become uninhabitable—as well as the name given to “man” both dead and alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church Fathers for inventing a Hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead of a freezing locality.
— from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4 by H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky

N. Nugent--"We wished to let ourselves down in the easiest manner possible; therefore we chose immediate freedom in preference to the apprenticeship."
— from The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4 by American Anti-Slavery Society

But now, for the moment, we must turn our eyes in the other direction and give attention to certain phases of Greek and of Oriental thought which were destined to play a most important part in the development of the Western mind—a more important part, indeed, in the early mediaeval period than that played by those important inductions of science which have chiefly claimed our attention in recent chapters.
— from A History of Science — Volume 1 by Edward Huntington Williams

I therefore entreated Mr. Pitt to send him a summons of council to attend, hoping that Mr. Norris would then be pleased to come up, as he would be enabled to reply to his friends, that his appearance had not been voluntary.
— from The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I by Thomas Clarkson

Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes the Emperor made presents to the princes and princesses of his family, of which I was nearly always the bearer; and I can assert that with two or three rare exceptions this duty was perfectly gratuitous, a circumstance which I recall here simply as a recollection.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various

As to the use of alcohol to blunt the nervous sensibility due to mental suffering, it is the testimony of the entire medical profession that this is the greatest cause of inebriety or drunkenness among women of all classes of society.
— from The Four Epochs of Woman's Life; A Study in Hygiene by Anna M. (Anna Mary) Galbraith