A rational being must always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as sovereign in a kingdom of ends which is rendered possible by the freedom of will.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

His financial affairs were hardly - 175 - in such a state that he could give up Marie’s fortune; for twelve thousand rix-dollars was a large sum in ready money, and gold, landed estates, and manorial rights were hard to part with when once acquired.
— from Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century by J. P. (Jens Peter) Jacobsen

Returning to Cimabue, Giotto certainly overshadowed his renown, just as a great light eclipses a much smaller one, and although Cimabue was, as it were, the first cause of the revival of the art of painting, yet Giotto, his disciple, moved by a praiseworthy ambition, and aided by Heaven and by Nature, penetrated deeper in thought, and threw open the gates of Truth to those who afterwards brought art to that perfection and grandeur which we see in our own age.
— from The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) by Giorgio Vasari