The legislative power, whence the positive law is derived, must either be established by original contract, long possession, present possession, conquest, or succession; and consequently the positive law must derive its force from some of those principles.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

When agriculture, commerce, or manual crafts have given men some knowledge of nature, the world thus recognised and dominated is far from seeming ultimate.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

The Small-minded man, for instance, being really worthy of good deprives himself of his deserts, and seems to have somewhat faulty from not having a sufficiently high estimate of his own desert, in fact from self-ignorance: because, but for this, he would have grasped after what he really is entitled to, and that is good.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Time seemed only to increase the strength of my passion: I grew melancholy and despondent; I fled from society, and my health declined daily.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis

Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout—he had denied it for form’s sake and because it was custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

For he that is dead is freed from sin ... let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof....
— from The Lord's Coming. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. II by Charles Henry Mackintosh

“When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow surely.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

But this he did not believe could be proved from any scriptural testimony; on the contrary, he was fully convinced that the Bible taught that "He that is dead is freed from sin."
— from Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou by Maturin Murray Ballou

“We just did it for fun,” she told him now.
— from Peggy Parsons, a Hampton Freshman by Annabel Sharp

Its left is bivouacked directly in front, facing south in the narrow ravine nearest the tall white butte that stands like a sentinel against the stormy sky, while the rest of the line sweeps around to the west, crossing the level plateau between the two main ravines.
— from Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life by Charles King

"I hope so, but I sincerely doubt it," Freddy Farmer said.
— from Dave Dawson on Guadalcanal by Robert Sidney Bowen

“I must depend in future for subsistence on the shell-fish, the very taste of which I abhor.”
— from The Rival Crusoes by William Henry Giles Kingston

Tired, disgusted, irritated, stupefied, they forgot the ugly dream as soon as possible, ran in the open air, and thought only of the chase, of war and the ladies; they were not so foolish as to turn their eyes a second time towards their crabbed litany; if they did come back to it, that was out of vanity; they wanted to set some Latin fable in their songs, or some learned abstraction, without comprehending a word of it, donning it for fashion’s sake, as the ermine of learning.
— from A Tour Through the Pyrenees by Hippolyte Taine

The original Fred Harvey is dead—has been dead, in fact, for several years; but his spirit goes marching on across the southwestern half of this country.
— from Roughing it De Luxe by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb