I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public administration has not become, not only more centralized, but more inquisitive and more minute it everywhere interferes in private concerns more than it did; it regulates more undertakings, and undertakings of a lesser kind; and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above, and around all private persons, to assist, to advise, and to coerce them.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

We now know that our Mandeville is a compilation, as clever and artistic as Malory’s ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ from the works of earlier writers, with few, if any, touches added from personal experience; that it was written in French, and rendered into Latin before it attracted the notice of a series of English translators (whose own accounts of the work they were translating are not to be trusted), and that the name Sir John Mandeville was a nom de guerre borrowed from a real knight of this name who lived in the reign of Edward II.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

“God will bless you,” said he, “you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms—“for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife; and for aid in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast; and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless.”
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

The infinitive is sometimes used with adjectives, chiefly by poets of the Augustan age, and late prose writers, often in imitation of a Greek idiom: as, indoctum iuga ferre nostra , H. 2, 6, 2, not taught our yoke to bear .
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

They told him, That custom, it being of so long a standing as above a thousand years, would, doubtless, now be admitted as a thing legal by any impartial judge; and besides, said they, if we get into the way, what's matter which way we get in? if we are in, we are in; thou art but in the way, who, as we perceive, came in at the gate; and we are also in the way, that came tumbling over the wall; wherein, now, is thy condition better than ours? CHR.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come Delivered under the similitude of a dream, by John Bunyan by John Bunyan

I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and am all over black and blue.
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

The mistake in my father, was in attacking my mother's motive, instead of the act itself; for certainly key-holes were made for other purposes; and considering the act, as an act which interfered with a true proposition, and denied a key-hole to be what it was—it became a violation of nature; and was so far, you see, criminal.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

A monster of five hundred thousand heads, Compact of rapine, piracy, and spoil, The scum of men, the hate and scourge of God, Raves in Aegyptia, and annoyeth us: My lord, it is the bloody Tamburlaine, A sturdy felon, and 217 a base-bred thief,
— from Tamburlaine the Great — Part 1 by Christopher Marlowe

Ashby's cavalry charged again and again, taking prisoners everywhere.
— from The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler

We returned on the sixth day, and I went to establish myself in my new home, for, as I was preparing to go to M. D—— R——-, to take his orders, after our landing, he came himself, and after asking M. F—— and me whether we were pleased with each other, he said to me, "Casanova, as you suit each other so well, you may be certain that you will greatly please me by remaining in the service of M. F." I obeyed respectfully, and in less than one hour I had taken possession of my new quarters.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 03: Military Career by Giacomo Casanova

But about the time of that rise, and for a good many years after it, what may be called the third generation of the novelists of the century began to make its appearance, and, as has been partly observed above, to devote itself to a somewhat different description of work, which will be noticed in a future chapter.
— from A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) by George Saintsbury

His widow returned and did live by giving lessons in English, at first privately in Cebu, where one of her pupils was the present and first Speaker of the Philippine Assembly, and afterwards as a government employee in the public schools and in the “Liceo” of Manila.
— from Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot by Austin Craig

When it appeared, after all the negotiation and consequent abatement, that their Roman hotel apartment would cost them hardly a fifth less than they had last paid in New York, they took a guilty refuge in the fact that they were getting for less money something which no money could buy in New York.
— from Roman Holidays, and Others by William Dean Howells

All power of the guardian over the estate of his ward is derived from the appointment of the court, but an appointment as guardian will not authorize a sale of property, nor an investment or disposal of money belonging to the ward, without a special order of the court.
— from Legal Status of Women in Iowa by Jennie L. (Jennie Lansley) Wilson

Sulla ordered that the property of the slain should be sold at auction and the proceeds put in the treasury.
— from Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 11 (of 15), Roman by Charles Morris

Because the substance is the absolute unity of individuality and universality of freedom, it follows that the actuality and action of each individual to keep and to take care of his own being, while it is on one hand conditioned by the pre-supposed total in whose complex alone he exists, is on the other a transition into a universal product.—The social disposition of the individuals is their sense of the substance, and of the identity of all their interests with the total; and that the other individuals mutually know each other and are actual only in this identity, is confidence (trust)—the genuine ethical temper.
— from Hegel's Philosophy of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

" The stranger laughed, as, after a glass of hot liquor, he arrayed himself beside the banked-up stove, and presently marched under escort towards Thurston's wood and bark winter dwelling.
— from Thurston of Orchard Valley by Harold Bindloss

Perish those riches which are acquired at the expense of my honor or my humanity!
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by George Lyman Kittredge