"Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to bed, "I hope you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass your examination.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

In plants under culture and placed under new conditions of life, sometimes the male organs and sometimes the female organs become more or less impotent; now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight a degree under nature, then, as pollen is already carried regularly from flower to flower, and as a more complete separation of the sexes of our plant would be advantageous on the principle of the division of labour, individuals with this tendency more and more increased, would be continually favoured or selected, until at last a complete separation of the sexes might be effected.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Let this, therefore, in the first place, be laid down as an unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, so long as he cannot escape it without sin.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Emphasis upon natural tendencies and powers as the only possible starting-point of development is indeed wholesome.
— from How We Think by John Dewey

In plants under culture and placed under new conditions of life, sometimes the male organs and sometimes the female organs become more or less impotent; now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight a degree under nature, then as pollen is already carried regularly from flower to flower, and as a more complete separation of the sexes of our plant would be advantageous on the principle of the division of labour, individuals with this tendency more and more increased, would be continually favoured or selected, until at last a complete separation of the sexes would be effected.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

It has been badly executed, I say, because general logic, not being limited to any particular kind of cognition (not even to the pure cognition of the understanding) nor to any particular objects, it cannot, without borrowing from other sciences, do more than present merely the titles or signs of possible methods and the technical expressions, which are employed in the systematic parts of all sciences; and thus the pupil is made acquainted with names, the meaning and application of which he is to learn only at some future time.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

They lived and died in another atmosphere, under a government that no longer exists; made war upon nations that are powerless to-day as the sleeping dead in a national cemetery; and the things which we read concerning them seem strange enough to us.
— from Bible Atlas: A Manual of Biblical Geography and History by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

Those flocks have been permitted to live, and they have bred until now there are perhaps 3,500 sheep in the state.
— from Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation by William T. (William Temple) Hornaday

"'Surely,' he said, 'upon nothing that any priest can do or leave undone, but upon whether the man hath done his duties well according to the best of his faith and knowledge.'
— from Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church by Nathan C. (Nathan Chapman) Kouns

Bags was between the devil and the deep sea, and any other uncomfortable neighbours that are possible to a boy.
— from David Blaize by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

Because since 1870 the Germans think that any country which professes to love peace, any country whose statesmen utter noble thoughts about peace, is simply a cowardly country, bent on making money, and afraid to fight.
— from Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Lester Pearson

Wholly becoming pale white , but the stem and pileus are alike marked-red , and the gills are at length reddish, wherefore, as well as for the strong smell of new meal , it is undoubtedly nearest to A. pessundatus.
— from Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc. by Charles McIlvaine

Above us now there are ploughed fields, but long ago right over our heads there existed a church and monastery to which these things belonged.’
— from St. Andrews Ghost Stories Fourth Edition by William Thomas Linskill

It is, perhaps, difficult for us now to appreciate precisely their position.
— from Pioneers of Science by Lodge, Oliver, Sir