I have determined, therefore, to beat a retreat in time, and am actually looking out for some other nest in this great city where old English manners are still kept up, where French is neither eaten, drunk, danced, nor spoken, and where there are no fashionable families of retired tradesmen.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

If we consider aright of the matter, force is not essentially different from any other motive of hope or fear, which may induce us to engage our word, and lay ourselves under any obligation.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

There are few campaigns at the end of which an increase of force is not earnestly desired by the conqueror as well as the conquered, and indeed should appear decisive; but that is not the point here, for that increase of force could not be necessary if the force had been so much larger at the first.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

For as wild grains mixed up with wheat, if very similar in size and appearance, are not easily kept apart, for if the sieve have small holes they don't pass through, and if large holes they pass with the corn, so flattery is not easily distinguished from friendship, being mixed up with it in feeling and emotion, habit and custom.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

The use of the bordure as a legitimate difference upon the Royal Arms ceased about the Tudor period, and differencing between members of the Royal Family is now exclusively done by means of these labels.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

[1] With the French, who are essentially a Southern people, the double education of despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of their impulsive temperament, made submission and endurance the common character of the people, and their most received notion of wisdom and excellence; and if envy of one another, and of all superiority, is not more rife among them than it is, the circumstance must be ascribed to the many valuable counteracting elements in the French character, and most of all to the great individual energy which, though less persistent and more intermittent than in the self-helping and struggling Anglo-Saxons, has nevertheless manifested itself among the French in nearly every direction in which the operation of their institutions has been favorable to it.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

The wild fable which envelops or adorns the cradle of every illustrious family is not easily disentangled.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

What followed is not easily described.
— from Union and Democracy by Allen Johnson

The flesh of a young black bear a year old, if fat, is not easily distinguished, when cooked, from a good pork spare rib.
— from Forest Life and Forest Trees: comprising winter camp-life among the loggers, and wild-wood adventure. with Descriptions of lumbering operations on the various rivers of Maine and New Brunswick by John S. Springer

Customs differ in different lands—a trite remark; but it is about all that can be said on the subject: after all, human feeling is not extremely different in different lands, when we once get back of mere form.
— from A Strange Discovery by Charles Romyn Dake

By pressing out the cells from the ducts, one can obtain portion of the duct, with the capillaries belonging to them, but they are short pieces, and the nerve fibril is not easily discoverable.
— from The Cleveland Medical Gazette, Vol. 1, No. 5, March 1886 by Various

By the defection of this town, which lay on the military road from Campania to Samnium, Aesernia was isolated, and that fortress already vigorously assailed found itself now exclusively dependent on the courage and perseverance of its defenders and their commandant Marcellus.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

[206] here introduce to render more comprehensible the passage from a material body to a spiritual action, contains only an empty explanation, for the function is not essentially distinct by its nature from the organ; it is simply "the organ in activity," it adds to the organ taken in a state of repose but one change, viz.
— from The Mind and the Brain Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps by Alfred Binet

Do you think that the piety of a woman, brought up as she has been, in the true faith, is not even deserving of respect when she desires to practice it with all due fervour? Without beliefs and without faith, do you expect to govern the world or a family by the laws of an atheistical Utopia?”
— from Leon Roch: A Romance, vol. 1 (of 2) by Benito Pérez Galdós

I suppose they stand first in New England, don't they, by all odds?
— from A Battle of the Books, recorded by an unknown writer for the use of authors and publishers To the first for doctrine, to the second for reproof, to both for correction and for instruction in righteousness by Gail Hamilton