The Administration of Mr. Adams, and the Administrations of all of his predecessors, had apparently inclined to the view that the Indian tribes were already states, having dominion over, and property in, the territory of the continent when the Europeans arrived upon it; that the titles of the European states to it were only valid as against each other, and meant, in relation to the aborigines, only a right of pre-emption; and that after the Constitution was established no government except the general Government of the United States could have anything to do with them.
— from The Middle Period, 1817-1858 by John William Burgess

But perhaps it is no real inconsistency that, with regard to many instances of modern origination, it is his habit to talk with a Gallic largeness and refer to the universe: he expatiates on the diffusive nature of intellectual products, free and all-embracing as the liberal air; on the infinitesimal smallness of individual origination compared with the massive inheritance of thought on which every new generation enters; on that growing preparation for every epoch through which certain ideas or modes of view are said to be in the air, and, still more metaphorically speaking, to be inevitably absorbed, so that every one may be excused for not knowing how he got them.
— from Impressions of Theophrastus Such by George Eliot

The other officers present, feeling that their remaining longer on the ground would effect no good, escaped.
— from The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8 by George Dodd

But I assume for a moment that the Irishmen, who express no great enthusiasm for the Home Rule Bill, desire the new constitution as ardently as sixty years or so ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform.
— from A Leap in the Dark A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the Bill of 1893 by Albert Venn Dicey

But I perceived that in some odd way I attracted her and I was neither wise enough nor generous enough not to let the thing develop.”
— from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells