The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.29.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be better not to thinkourselves wise about his character.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Adam Bede, ch.29.

Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism is not uncommon; it is the combination that is necessary, and that combination is rare.

-Roosevelt,Theodore
  Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography.

The common wages of labour depends every where upon the contract usually made between those two parties whose interests are by no means the same†Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.8.

Her logic was a combination of half-truths and cliche¤  s, her worldviewa compound of misconceptions deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective of a subway tunnel.

-Toole,John Kennedy
A Confederacy of Dunces (published1980), ch.5, pt.3.

Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.

-Trollope, Anthony
  CanYou Forgive Her?, ch.24.