We sat down, however, entered into conversation, which lasted half-an hour, so that I had time to recollect myself; and (so capricious were my thoughts) even to hope that Narcissa would not appear—when, all of a sudden, a servant coming in, gave us notice that dinner was upon the table, and my perturbation returned with such violence that I could scarcely conceal it from the company, as I ascended the staircase.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge.
— from Areopagitica A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England by John Milton

'tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring nor mending; 'tis all hocus pocus!'"
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

The cosmological proof, which we are about to examine, retains the connection between absolute necessity and the highest reality; but, instead of reasoning from this highest reality to a necessary existence, like the preceding argument, it concludes from the given unconditioned necessity of some being its unlimited reality.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

And so we were very happy, until one terrible day the great round world gave a twist and we were turned away from the sun, so that its rays went slantingly over our heads and gave us no warmth.
— from Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood

My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Can it indeed be true that the same sun which lights all these moving streets, these buyers and sellers, these catchers of trains, is lighting the desert out there as imperturbably as it lit us, journeying on after it day after day in the silent places; did it see all these people from its inaccessible height, and, sharing its gifts equally with them and with us, give us no hint of what it was looking down upon?
— from By Desert Ways to Baghdad by Louisa Jebb Wilkins

if our lily mistress gives us not our freedom after this she's not the lass I take her for.
— from The Land of Bondage: A Romance by John Bloundelle-Burton

That all those laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are therefore, before God, utterly null and void; being an audacious usurpation of the Divine prerogative, a daring infringement on the law of nature, a base overthrow of the very foundations of the social compact, a complete extinction of all the relations, endearments, and obligations of mankind, and a presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments—and that, therefore, they ought to be instantly abrogated.
— from Discussion on American Slavery by Robert J. (Robert Jefferson) Breckinridge

If, for instance, we take the name of Æolus; it is the source of some of the most famous Greek houses, yet Homer never mentions it, except in the patronymic, and gives us no means of absolutely attaching it to any part of Greece.
— from Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3 I. Prolegomena II. Achæis; or, the Ethnology of the Greek Races by W. E. (William Ewart) Gladstone

The nineteenth century has developed no new species of fine art, and in its productions in sculpture, painting, architecture and music has given us no works superior to those of the earlier centuries.
— from Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century by Charles Morris

Rowlandson gives us (November 25, 1813)
— from English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2) by John Ashton

A difficulty of a broader character must be felt in the fact that the poems themselves give us no hint of Jeremiah.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Walter F. (Walter Frederic) Adeney

She felt the more annoyed, because she had on more than one occasion, observed that there was not that unanimity between her husband and Lieutenant Elmsley, which she conceived ought to exist between parties so circumstanced—a commander of a remote post, and his second in command, on whose mutual good understanding, not only the personal security of all might depend, but the existence of those social relations, without which, their isolated position involved all the unpleasantness of a voluntary banishment.
— from Hardscrabble; or, the fall of Chicago: a tale of Indian warfare by Major (John) Richardson