The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

So the distinction between the elegant and the vulgar jest is an easy matter: the one kind, if well timed (for instance, in hours of mental relaxation), is becoming to the most dignified person; the other is unfit for any gentleman, if the subject is indecent and the words obscene.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero

XII, Div. IV )—“I shall fly on the top of Kuyawa, I shall disappear; dissolve in mist, in smoke; become like a wind eddy, become alone—on top of Kuyawa.”
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

Before the time of Kant it was thought that all judgements of which we could be certain a priori were of this kind: that in all of them there was a predicate which was only part of the subject of which it was asserted.
— from The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

His head became the mountains, his breath the wind and clouds, his voice the thunder, his limbs the four quarters of the earth, his blood the rivers, his flesh the soil, his beard the constellations, his skin and hair the herbs and trees, his teeth, bones, and marrow the metals, rocks, and precious stones, his sweat the rain, and the insects creeping over his body human beings, who thus had a lowlier origin even than the tears of Khepera in Egyptian cosmology.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

Grief should be the instructor of the wise; / Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most / Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, / The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

Even when possession is taken or kept in a way which is punished by the criminal law, as in case of forcible entry and detainer, proof of title allows the defendant to retain it, and in many cases has been held an answer to an action of trespass.
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Back by the Coulterville trail, the peaks of Sierra Nevada in sight, across the North Fork of the Merced, by Gentry's Gulch, over hills and through cañons, to Fremont's again, and thence to Stockton and San Francisco—all this at the end of August, when there has been no rain for four months, and the air is dear and very hot, and the ground perfectly dry; windmills, to raise water for artificial irrigation of small patches, seen all over the landscape, while we travel through square miles of hot dust, where they tell us, and truly that in winter and early spring we should be up to our knees in flowers; a country, too, where surface gold-digging is so common and unnoticed that the large, six-horse stage-coach, in which I travelled from Stockton to Hornitos, turned off in the high road for a Chinaman, who, with his pan and washer, was working up a hole which an American had abandoned, but where the minute and patient industry of the Chinaman averaged a few dollars a day.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA By Jules Verne ON THE OLD KEARSARGE IN THE WASP'S NEST By Cyrus Townsend Brady THE BOY SETTLERS
— from True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World by A. W. (Adolphus Washington) Greely

“There is little need for that, O king,” I answered, being made bold by fear, for I saw that if I did nothing death would swiftly end my doubts.
— from Nada the Lily by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

But they believe that our king is an admiral.
— from With the Black Prince by William O. Stoddard

But he may have done so, and we may provisionally place him in the interval between the patesi Lugal-shag-engur and Ur-Ninâ, who in his numerous texts that have been [Pg 106] recovered always claims the title of "king" in place of "patesi," a fact that suggests an increase in the power and importance of Lagash.
— from A History of Sumer and Akkad An account of the early races of Babylonia from prehistoric times to the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy by L. W. (Leonard William) King

If they only knowed ... if they only knowed how dearly I've loved 'em all--Rhoda, too.
— from The Virgin in Judgment by Eden Phillpotts

The old king is near his grave.
— from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India by Pandit Natesa Sastri

When we landed and passed the beach, we sank nearly up to our knees in mosses of various sorts, producing as we moved through them a curious sensation.
— from Audubon and His Journals, Volume 1 (of 2) by John James Audubon

Nevertheless, when all things are weighed in the balance, not a scintilla of doubt remains that the draining of the Fens was begun and continued, as the old knight in Hereward the Wake said, "by the inspiration of God."
— from Through East Anglia in a Motor Car by James Edmund Vincent