So it is that we often unduly depreciate the achievements as well as the judgments of our youth.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

Since, however, the world of understanding contains the foundation of the world of sense, and consequently of its laws also, and accordingly gives the law to my will (which belongs wholly to the world of understanding) directly, and must be conceived as doing so, it follows that, although on the one side I must regard myself as a being belonging to the world of sense, yet on the other side I must recognize myself as subject as an intelligence to the law of the world of understanding, i.e., to reason, which contains this law in the idea of freedom, and therefore as subject to the autonomy of the will: consequently I must regard the laws of the world of understanding as imperatives for me and the actions which conform to them as duties.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

This movement of thought, which clothed external objects in all the wealth of undeciphered dreams, has long lost its momentum and yielded to a contrary tendency.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs.
— from White Fang by Jack London

Their consternation magnified the danger; the want of union diminished their resources; and the madness of civil factions was more solicitous to accuse, than to remedy, the evils, which they imputed to the misconduct of their adversaries.
— 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

They record how in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen, he began to seek after the God of David; and in his twelfth year he set about the work of utterly destroying idols throughout the whole territory of Israel, in the cities and ruins of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, as well as in Judah and Benjamin.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Books of Chronicles by W. H. (William Henry) Bennett

She was beginning to understand that she had put herself in the way of utter destruction;—that she had walked to the brink of a precipice, and that she must now topple over it.
— from Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

The scout replied cheerfully, and, from one thing to another, they went on until, discovering that they were sympathetic spirits, they became confidante, and each told to the other his whole history.
— from In the Track of the Troops by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

A magnificent waterspout appeared not a mile to windward of us, doubtless evolved by the recent heavy rain-pour.
— from Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea. With Introductory Notes on North Queensland. by W. D. Pitcairn

It is well known that Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other, have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat....
— from The Parables of Our Lord by William Arnot

An intermediate course, like that adopted at Zurich (Woodcut No. 722 ), would perhaps best reconcile the difficulty; but this was only used during the period of transition from one style to the other.
— from A History of Architecture in All Countries, Volume 2, 3rd ed. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by James Fergusson

“To which of us do you intend that adjective to apply?” inquired Elnora.
— from A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter