Some of the great vassals of the king of the Huns, who were themselves in the rank of powerful princes, had been sent to ratify an alliance and society of arms with the emperor, or rather with the general of the West.
— 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

Thus the democratic tendency which leads men unceasingly to multiply the privileges of the State, and to circumscribe the rights of private persons, is much more rapid and constant amongst those democratic nations which are exposed by their position to great and frequent wars, than amongst all others.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious—the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

By feasts we understand: pride, high-spirits, exuberance; scorn of all kinds of seriousness and Philistinism; a divine saying of Yea to one's self, as the result of physical plenitude and perfection—all states to which the Christian cannot honestly say Yea.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

By many it has been believed to be identical with the crux ansata of the ancient phallic worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that, to the rites of primitive peoples.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Christianity is called the religion of pity .—Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For, if they reflect upon and examine their own arguments, they will find that, after following for some time the path of nature and experience, and discovering themselves no nearer their object, they suddenly leave this path and pass into the region of pure possibility, where they hope to reach upon the wings of ideas what had eluded all their empirical investigations.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

WHAT POVERTY THREATENED—OF GRANITE AND BRASS Minnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then being called, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited by families of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and were still coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rate of 50,000 a year.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

7. In general terms--the war to cease; a general amnesty, so far as the Executive of the United States can command, on condition of the disbandment of the Confederate armies, the distribution of the arms, and the resumption of peaceful pursuits by the officers and men hitherto composing said armies.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

Whoever entertains it has not come within the region of profitable philosophising on that subject.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Another argument against the use of mixers is that both walk and curb and gutter work involve the use of forms and the application of mortar finish, the placing of which are really the limiting factors in the rate of progress permissible, and this rate is too slow to consume an output necessary to make a mixer plant economical as compared with hand mixing where so much transportation is involved.
— from Concrete Construction: Methods and Costs by Halbert Powers Gillette

We are far without the range of possible personal contact, yet more in immediate obedience to each other’s will.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, November 1884, No. 2 by Chautauqua Institution

And not less true is it that, remarkable as are the powers or, in other words, as are the Forces which are exerted by living beings, yet all these forces are either identical with those which exist in the inorganic world, or they are convertible into them; I mean in just the same sense as the researches of physical philosophers have shown that heat is convertible into electricity, that electricity is convertible into magnetism, magnetism into mechanical force or chemical force, and any one of them with the other, each being measurable in terms of the other,—even so, I say, that great law is applicable to the living world.
— from Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley

If, however, we would justly appreciate the relation of pagan philosophy to Christian truth, we must note that, when Paul arrived in Athens, the age of Athenian glory had passed away.
— from Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles by B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Cocker

Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure, but also a consummate 244 master of parliamentary tactics.
— from Studies in Contemporary Biography by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood, alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. by Various

An English scientist, Professor Crawford, has published a book entitled "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena," in which he tells the results of many years of testing materializations by the strictest scientific methods.
— from The Book of Life by Upton Sinclair

A Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers Which Our English Ayre will Permitt to be noursed up: with A Kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, & fruites, for meate or sause used with us, and An Orchard of all sorte of fruit bearing Trees and shrubbes fit for our Land together With the right orderinge planting & preseruing of them and their uses & vertues.
— from The Old English Herbals by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

He knew that the remains of poor Pierre would certainly reach this tonight, although an unexpected delay has occurred; and there are reasons why he wishes the funeral completed before tomorrow.
— from The Room in the Dragon Volant by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu