There is no limit to the meaning which an action may come to possess.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

And as men catch dotterels by putting out a leg or an arm, with those mutual glances of the eyes they first inveigle one another.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

My orders were that an officer of the Quartermaster's Department, United States Army, might furnish the holder, agent, or attorney, a mere certificate of the fact of seizure, with description of the bales' marks, etc., the cotton then to be turned over to the agent of the Treasury Department, to be shipped to New York for sale.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

Along with all 528 these undertakings Appius with a hundred quinqueremes, and Marcus Claudius with an army, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Cos. III., B.C. 214.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

And now, O my children, Adam and Eve, look at my old gray hair and at my feeble state, and at my coming from that distant place.
— from The First Book of Adam and Eve by Rutherford Hayes Platt

Don Quixote bade his excellence arrange all matters connected with the affair as he pleased, as on his part he would obey him in everything.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I am sad to consider the effects of his death, if he should miscarry; but Dr. Frazier tells me that he is in as good condition as a man can be in his case.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

In the mean time, the fair cause of this contest, Mrs Winifred Jenkins, seemed overwhelmed with affliction, and Mr Clinker acted much on the reserve, though he did not presume to find fault with her conduct.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

In one place in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few days before seen rough bullion on the ground in the open air, like the confectioner's pyramids at some swell dinner in New York.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Suppose he should have a pistol, he can kill but one of us, and a man can die but once.—That's my comfort, a man can die but once.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Like other sharp children, Why-Why was always asking metaphysical conundrums.
— from In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories by Andrew Lang

Her thick hair, brown as a mellowed chestnut, with a gleam of dark red where the light touched it, like the red of November oak leaves, was, as usual, in her way, the heavy braids breaking from the coil at the back of her head, one by one, as she read on through Hamlet .
— from Anne: A Novel by Constance Fenimore Woolson

The Roderiquez Canal is no canal at all, but a disused mill race, which an active man can leap and any one may wade.
— from When Men Grew Tall, or The Story of Andrew Jackson by Alfred Henry Lewis

Footnote 34 ‎‏במילה ובטבילה ובהוצאת דמים של קרבן‏‎; ‎‏במילת ובטבילה ובהוצאה דמים של קרבן‏‎ Footnote 44 magnus ipse est; magnus ipsa est Footnote 59 Eodem sensu Græci appellant artis medica candidatos; Eodom sensu Græci appellant artis medica condidatos Footnote 74 ‎‏אני סומך אותך תהיה סמוך‏‎; ‎‏סומך תהיה אני אותך סמתך‏‎ (as best possible to make out from the printing) Footnote 113 ‎‏אל תגע בי‏‎; ‎‏אל תגש בי‏‎ Footnote 126 Concil.
— from Moses and Aaron: Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites, Used by the Ancient Hebrews by Thomas Goodwin

[364] Still, he will naturally [476] contemplate it with reverence and wonder, as a marvellous product of nature, the result of long centuries of growth, showing in many parts the same fine adaptation of means to complex exigencies as the most elaborate structures of physical organisms exhibit: he will handle it with respectful delicacy as a mechanism, constructed of the fluid element of opinions and dispositions, by the indispensable aid of which the actual quantum of human happiness is continually being produced; a mechanism which no ‘politicians or philosophers’ could create, yet without which the harder and coarser machinery of Positive Law could not be permanently maintained, and the life of man would become—as Hobbes forcibly expresses it—“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

I have been hoping you would call again," added Miss Celia, shaking hands with the pretty boy, who regarded with benign interest the giver of little cakes.
— from Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott

"He's a badly wounded man, whether he's an American, Mexican, Chinaman or Hindu," Hal retorted.
— from Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants; or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

The salad is made by removing a strip of skin from each banana, scooping out the fruit, cutting it in pieces, adding as much celery or apple and [Pg 144] half as much of cut up English walnut meats which have been blanched, and covering the whole with French dressing, and returning to the skins, heaping it a little in them.
— from Gala-Day Luncheons: A Little Book of Suggestions by Caroline French Benton

The slow night wore away and morning came.
— from A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of To-day by Helen M. (Helen Maria) Winslow

General Littlepage listened with profound attention; and as for Colonel Follock, he raised his eyebrows, grunted, laughed as well as a man could with his lips compressing a pipe, and uttered in the best way he was able, under the circumstances, and with sufficient sententiousness, the single word "Danpury."
— from The Chainbearer; Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts by James Fenimore Cooper