It was M. Jannet who in our days first restored the pure and exact text of Rabelais, not only without retouching it, but without making additions or insertions, or juxtaposition of things that were not formerly found together.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

To which menace the other returning no other answer, but only a fierce and disdainful look; “What,” says Alexander, observing his haughty and obstinate silence, “is he too stiff to bend a knee!
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

But the reason I glanced upon but now, may it not also hence proceed, that, our studies in France having almost no other aim but profit, except as to those who, by nature born to offices and employments rather of glory than gain, addict themselves to letters, if at all, only for so short a time (being taken from their studies before they can come to have any taste of them, to a profession that has nothing to do with books), there ordinarily remain no others to apply themselves wholly to learning, but people of mean condition, who in that only seek the means to live; and by such people, whose souls are, both by nature and by domestic education and example, of the basest alloy the fruits of knowledge are immaturely gathered and ill digested, and delivered to their recipients quite another thing.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

“Just what you please; you may speak of her country and of her youthful reminiscences, or if you like it better you can talk of Rome, Naples, or Florence.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

At that time, the Russians were so used to victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an event.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

—‘I believe people saw fairies, but I think one reason no one sees them now is because every place in this parish where they used to appear has been put into sheep, and deer, and grouse, and shooting.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

* * * * * [ Various particulars of the prolonged and perplexed navigation ensuing here follow, with incidents of a calamitous calm, from which portion one passage is extracted, to wit :] —That on the fifth day of the calm, all on board suffering much from the heat, and want of water, and five having died in fits, and mad, the negroes became irritable, and for a chance gesture, which they deemed suspicious—though it was harmless—made by the mate, Raneds, to the deponent in the act of handing a quadrant, they killed him; but that for this they afterwards were sorry, the mate being the only remaining navigator on board, except the deponent.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

I put forward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage Mr. Waldron in particular, but that you may not lose your sense of proportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest."
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

From her third brother, Asbrand, who had only one son, Biargey asked a turf-cutter, as hers was not keen enough to cut all she wanted; again she was offered her choice, and chose the new, untried cutter, instead of the old, rusty, notched one.
— from Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race by M. I. (Maud Isabel) Ebbutt

It seems to me that our countrymen must either love music in all sincerity, or they display an odious, stupid, and affected coldness, while an Italian throat sings just as it comes, in a straightforward way, though perhaps for the sake of money,—but still not for the sake of money, and æsthetics, and criticism, and self-esteem, and the right school, and twenty-seven thousand other reasons, none of which really harmonize with their real nature.
— from Letters of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy from 1833 to 1847 by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

A good instance is supplied by the Dinka, a large cattle-breeding tribe, or rather nation, of the White Nile.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12) by James George Frazer

That is the ostensible reason; no other is alleged.
— from The Subterranean Brotherhood by Julian Hawthorne

There were then at the end of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the Renaissance, two opposing tendencies in regard to the poetic art, one representing the humanistic reverence for ancient culture, and for poetry as one of the phases of that culture, and the other representing not only the mediæval tradition, but a purism allied to that of early Christianity, and akin to the ascetic conceptions of life found in almost every period.
— from A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance With special reference to the influence of Italy in the formation and development of modern classicism by Joel Elias Spingarn

For one brief blessed week she would be in her element, would escape from the galling restraint of economy; and, more than all, in the background of her mind there lurked a hope that by some means she might recapture that vigorous, self-poised husband of hers, whose love was, after all, the one real necessity of her life; and whom she now saw slipping slowly, surely out of reach.
— from Captain Desmond, V.C. by Maud Diver

"There has lately come to this court—or rather has not come but has been brought—a prisoner, Niccola di Lorenzo, once the formidable Tribune of Rome, now of all the men the most unhappy—and what is more, not perhaps worthy of the compassion which the misery of his present state calls forth.
— from The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant