If it be asked to what length the principle admits of being carried, or how many votes might be accorded to an individual on the ground of superior qualifications, I answer, that this is not in itself very material, provided the distinctions and gradations are not made arbitrarily, but are such as can be understood and accepted by the general conscience and understanding.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

On the last day of the carnival Kettler asked a good many people to a ball and supper.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The [3127] Hollander, in his dissertatiuncula cum Apelle , censures all; and thus they disagree amongst themselves, old and new, irreconcilable in their opinions; thus Aristarchus, thus Hipparchus, thus Ptolemeus, thus Albateginus, thus Alfraganus, thus Tycho, thus Ramerus, thus Roeslinus, thus Fracastorius, thus Copernicus and his adherents, thus Clavius and Maginus, &c., with their followers, vary and determine of these celestial orbs and bodies: and so whilst these men contend about the sun and moon, like the philosophers in Lucian, it is to be feared, the sun and moon will hide themselves, and be as much offended as [3128]
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Then those two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, rose up and came near one another, and began a sore fight, and cast forth fire with their breath.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

And thou unblemish't form of Chastity, I see ye visibly and now beleeve That he, the Supreme good t'whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, Would send a glistring Guardian if need were To keep my life and honour unassail'd.
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

Thus the Hare reasoned; so he kept Watch day and night, and hardly slept; Doubtful he was, uneasy ever; A breath, a shadow, brought a fever.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

I have even known evidence admitted to show the character he bore when a boy at school.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Thou art but a sorry makeshift.
— from Pabo, the Priest: A Novel by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

My flesh and blood are still unreasonably warm and pulsing and rebellious.
— from Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

I'm as big a snob as any of them now.
— from A Damsel in Distress by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

(?) “Watercresses,” with the portrait of a Silly Billy; “The Wild Boar Hunt,” by two wolves chasing a deer; “The Dying Child to its Mother,” by an Angel appearing to an old man; “Crazy Jane,” by the Royal Arms of England; “Autumn Leaves lie strew’d around,” by a ship in full sail; “Cherry Ripe,” by Death’s Head and Cross Bones; “Jack at the Windlass,” falls under a Roadside Inn; while “William Tell” is presented to the British public in form and style of an old woman nursing an infant of a squally nature.
— from A History of the Cries of London, Ancient and Modern by Charles Hindley

Before you came she was misunderstood always, she was melancholy and brooding and self-centred, and you have put the only brightness in her life that has ever been there.
— from The Builders by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Why on earth should the doctor want a photograph of the Dane Oxbye to show the friends of Lord Harry? Could he have made a blunder as stupid as it was uncalled for?
— from Blind Love by Wilkie Collins

But this I know for sure, that these are they who set them to work on such a business, and spy for them, and sell them their plunder, as they may well do since they are of aspect like other folk and know their tongues --
— from The Sundering Flood by William Morris

The whole world knows how the end came, with her loving ministrations to the very last of the three restful years which they at this time spent together at the old home, and how he looked Death bravely in the face, as became a soldier and a Christian.
— from Threads of Grey and Gold by Myrtle Reed

I noticed that when he showed them, which was very often, they were not set together as in dogs, weasels, and other savage snarling animals, but apart, showing the whole terrible serration in the huge red mouth.
— from The Naturalist in La Plata by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

On the same day he ate his dinner with a good appetite; but about six o’clock in the evening he was struck with hemiplegia, which deprived him completely of the use of his left side.
— from Observations on Insanity With Practical Remarks on the Disease and an Account of the Morbid Appearances on Dissection by John Haslam