The other gods dwell far away, Or have no ears, Or are not, or pay us no heed.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

if that too should fail us, what will become of this poor undone nation?
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

What keeps supernatural morality, in its better forms, within the limits of sanity is the fact that it reinstates in practice, under novel associations and for motives ostensibly different, the very natural virtues and hopes which, when seen to be merely natural, it had thrown over with contempt.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy—who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom—he will have no great expectations from anything or any condition in life: he will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor lament over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

The unconscious thus receives a new meaning for us; the idea of "at present" or "at a specific time" disappears from its conception, for it can also mean permanently unconscious, not merely latent at the time .
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

"The Greek church, and a good part of Christendom besides, never received your service in an unknown tongue, but in their own natural language, which all the people understand; neither your transubstantiation, your receiving in one kind, your purgatory, your images, &c. "As for the unity which is in your church, what is it but treason, murder, poisoning one another, idolatry, superstition, and wickedness?
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

The account that follows, in all copies, of Elisha the prophet's concern for him, and his concern for Elisha, greatly favors Josephus's copies, and supposes this king to have been then a good man, and no idolater, with whom God's prophets used not to be so familiar.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Sending immediately for Servius, after she had showed to him her husband almost expiring, holding his right hand, she entreats him not to suffer the death of his father-in-law to pass unavenged, nor his mother-in-law to be an object of insult to their enemies.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

For duty is to be a practical, unconditional necessity of action; it must therefore hold for all rational beings (to whom an imperative can apply at all), and for this reason only be also a law for all human wills.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

But its mode of administration for a long period underwent numerous changes, before becoming established by a definite law.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

If he attacked the Boers and was successful it meant a future onslaught with increased power upon Natal, and, in any case, might easily involve the hundreds of thousands of related tribes in the Colony.
— from South Africa and the Boer-British War, Volume I Comprising a History of South Africa and its people, including the war of 1899 and 1900 by J. Castell (John Castell) Hopkins

This latter vessel he placed in command of a certain John Malyoe whom he had picked up no one knows where—a young man of very good family in England, who had turned red-handed pirate.
— from Stolen Treasure by Howard Pyle

Produced under normal conditions, with plenty of time for drying, this primer was satisfactory.
— from America's Munitions 1917-1918 by Benedict Crowell

There, where the company, like the waiters, is polyglot; where a noble, white-bearded English gentleman is sandwiched between a little German professor and a Diputado to the Congress, where French journalists sit by young American exquisites, who are picking up notions in Europe, and mere tourists who have come to "do" Spain in thirteen days are listening to the experiences of a mining engineer from the West Riding of Yorkshire, who has been in the country for thirteen years; the gossip, unlike the fun without, is fast and furious.
— from Romantic Spain: A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. I) by John Augustus O'Shea

There is a beautiful passage in Statius, which may be quoted here: It is in that poet’s best manner: Qualis vicino volucris jam sedula partu, Jamque timens quâ fronde domum suspendat inanem, Providet hinc ventos, hinc anxia cogitat angues, Hinc homines; tandem dubiæ placet umbra, novisque Vix stetit in ramis, et protinus arbor amatur.
— from The Curse of Kehama, Volume 2 (of 2) by Robert Southey

Now all lie scattered at random over the whole area of the city, and it puzzles us not a little to conceive how such singularly solid buildings can have been so utterly overthrown.
— from The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan by Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram