Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Or if it be possible that the SOUL can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasures or pain, apart, which the MAN is not conscious of nor partakes in,—it is certain that Socrates asleep and Socrates awake is not the same person; but his soul when he sleeps, and Socrates the man, consisting of body and soul, when he is waking, are two persons: since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for that happiness or misery of his soul, which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he sleeps, without perceiving anything of it; no more than he has for the happiness or misery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Do not all fix'd Bodies, when heated beyond a certain degree, emit Light and shine; and is not this Emission perform'd by the vibrating motions of their parts?
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

By this means I was drawn irresistibly to the northern sagas; and I now tried, as far as was possible without a fluent knowledge of the Scandinavian languages, to acquaint myself with the Edda, as well as with the prose version which existed of a considerable portion of the Heldensage.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

It is through its very incompleteness that art becomes complete in beauty, and so addresses itself, not to the faculty of recognition nor to the faculty of reason, but to the æsthetic sense alone, which, while accepting both reason and recognition as stages of apprehension, subordinates them both to a pure synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, and, taking whatever alien emotional elements the work may possess, uses their very complexity as a means by which a richer unity may be added to the ultimate impression itself.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

As I walked along, I kept glancing up at these boards, confidently expecting to see a few of them change into something; and I never turned a corner suddenly without looking out for the clown and pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or behind some pillar close at hand.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

She was conscious of a little recoil from it, such as is natural to a young girl who has not learnt by experience the meaning of sorrow; but the recoil was followed by a rush of that sympathy for which she had always shown a great capacity.
— from A True Friend: A Novel by Adeline Sergeant

He opened the table-drawer as he spoke, and I noticed that he slipped his revolver into his pocket.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

'Sister' seems an insufficient name to call you by.
— from Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement by Harry Johnston

A sudden shower of jewels it seemed like, and when the last drops had fallen the bird began another song, a continuation of the first, but more voluptuous and intense; and then, as if he felt that he had set the theme sufficiently, he started away into new trills and shakes and runs, piling cadenza upon cadenza till the theme seemed lost, but the bird held it in memory while all his musical extravagances were flowing, and when the inevitable moment came he repeated the first three notes.
— from The Brook Kerith: A Syrian story by George Moore

Thus Thales, we are told, imagined its first principle to be water; Anaximander, boundless matter; Anaximenes, air; the Pythagoreans said, all is number; the Eleatic school, all is the one unchangeable being.
— from The Formation of Christendom, Volume II by T. W. (Thomas William) Allies

Is it possible that a Christian and a Calvinist would repeat such an irreverent, not to say blasphemous, supplication?
— from Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Christian? by John E. (John Eleazer) Remsburg

'We've done it, my boy,' he said, and I noted the satisfaction in his voice.
— from The Pomp of Yesterday by Joseph Hocking

He told me, the last night he had a dream, which was so forcible, and made such an impression upon his mind, that he could not be quiet till he had made the proposal to me to go; and if I refused him, then he thought his dream was significant; and if not, then his dream was at an end.
— from The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe

Your father advised most strongly against it; not that he doubted that I should be victorious in the struggle to which I was to be exposed--a Werben would always, and in all circumstances, do her duty--but because he took the whole thing for a romance, that might do very well in a French play, but was altogether out of place in the realities of German life, and particularly in the case of a German nobleman and his wife.
— from The Breaking of the Storm, Vol. III. by Friedrich Spielhagen

"I don't know," she answered; "I never thought any thing about it."
— from Rose Clark by Fanny Fern