The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

For pain must be reckoned as the negative quantity of pleasure, to be balanced against and subtracted from the positive in estimating happiness on the whole; we must therefore conceive, as at least ideally possible, a point of transition in consciousness at which we pass from the positive to the negative.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
— from Protagoras by Plato

Having grasped, for example, the uniqueness of the process of specific selection (ὁλκὴ τοῦ οἰκείου), by which the tissues nourish themselves, he proceeds to apply this principle in explanation of entirely different classes of phenomena; thus he mixes it up with the physical phenomenon of the attraction of the lodestone for iron, of dry grain for moisture, etc.
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

Betty, after a moment's pause withdrew, and immediately we could hear her waken Rifle, who no sooner heard of Waddle's flight than he jumped out of bed and dressed, venting a thousand execrations, and vowing to murder the pedlar if ever he should set eyes on him again: “For,” said he “the scoundrel has by this time raised the hue and cry against me.”
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

But you sought to make the punishment in each case fit the crime, by ascertaining as dispassionately as if the defendant were fresh from the moon, just what each accused man had himself done.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

Here staid till 9 o’clock almost, and then took coach with so much love and kindnesse from my Lady Carteret, Lady Jemimah, and Lady Slaving, that it joys my heart, and when I consider the manner of my going hither, with a coach and four horses and servants and a woman with us, and coming hither being so much made of, and used with that state, and then going to Windsor and being shewn all that we were there, and had wherewith to give every body something for their pains, and then going home, and all in fine weather and no fears nor cares upon me, I do thinke myself obliged to thinke myself happy, and do look upon myself at this time in the happiest occasion a man can be, and whereas we take pains in expectation of future comfort and ease, I have taught myself to reflect upon myself at present as happy, and enjoy myself in that consideration, and not only please myself with thoughts of future wealth and forget the pleasure we at present enjoy.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.
— from Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Thus the control of Parliament upon the executory power is lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of government.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

The misery and poverty of those people who have little or nothing to pay, is equally natural, though it does not astonish one quite so much.
— from An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. Designed To Shew How The Prosperity Of The British Empire May Be Prolonged by William Playfair

“This conqueror having subdued Thibet,” says the Mongol history, “set out to penetrate into Enedkek (India.)
— from Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China During the years 1844-5-6. Volume 2 by Evariste Régis Huc

This paper I examined most carefully with a microscope; but could see in it no signs of secret writing beyond what might be contained in the disposition of the numbers themselves.
— from The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker

Perhaps, to put it euphemistically, he appropriated funds not his own—swiped from your great-grandfather's till.
— from Making Over Martha by Julie M. Lippmann

This case Leslie also commandeered, giving to Purchas, in exchange, a signed agreement to pay to Potter’s heirs, executors, or assigns—if such could be found upon their return to England—the full value of the goods, as well as of the clothing that Leslie had appropriated to his own use.
— from Dick Leslie's Luck: A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure by Harry Collingwood

Then going to the one where the dog stood watching him, he plunged the point in easily between the bricks.
— from The Mynns' Mystery by George Manville Fenn

My dearest W. , Your letter of the 28th would have made me laugh heartily were we not annoyed that you should have suffered such uneasiness on our account; the panic in England is ridiculous and most unfounded.
— from Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville by Mary Somerville

There is, certainly, a voluptuous pleasure in the quarrels of lovers; but they ought not to last long, neither should they too {180} frequently occur, lest they produce ill effects.
— from The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue, vol. 1/3 by Mateo Alemán

It is hardly safe to predict what may be the social and material, much less the intellectual possibilities of that near period, when, gliding on "the pale iron edge," we may jostle Chinese mandarins en route for Europe, and European money kings on their way to the Golcondas of the East.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867 by Various