A man whose services to France have been of the very slightest is a fetich looked on with superstitious awe because he has always seen everything in red; but he is good, at the most, to be put into the Museum of Arts and Crafts, among the automatic machines, and labeled La Fayette; while the prince at whom everybody flings a stone, the man who despises humanity so much that he spits as many oaths as he is asked for in the face of humanity, saved France from being torn in pieces at the Congress of Vienna; and they who should have given him laurels fling mud at him.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are"—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

As for man, there is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and the Iroquois believed in.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

I had also the comfort of a few lines on Wednesday morning from Henry himself, just after your letter was gone, giving so good an account of his feelings as made me perfectly easy.
— from The Letters of Jane Austen Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne by Jane Austen

He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday to say that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I particularly begged him to do.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The candles were brought, the fire was stirred up, and a fresh log of wood thrown on.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday, to say that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I particularly begged him to do.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

He generally had a levee of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters; Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, Steevens, Beaucherk, &c. &c., and sometimes learned ladies, particularly I remember a French lady of wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

I returned into the house for a while to do business there with Commissioner Pett, and there with the officers of the Chest, where I saw more of Sir W. Batten’s business than ever I did before, for whereas he did own once under his hand to them that he was accountable for L2200, of which he had yet paid but L1600, he writes them a letter lately that he hath but about L50 left that is due to the Chest, but I will do something in it and that speedily.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

There are four leagues of wood; the Jew rides slowly.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

As a consequence, we now find that to a greater extent than ever before, whole industries are dominated by one or a few large organizations which can restrict production in the interest of higher profits and thus reduce employment and purchasing power.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

Geology is a field left open, with the amplest permission from above, to the widest and wildest speculations of man.
— from Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2 by Thomas De Quincey

The prologue to "All for Love" opens with the lines— What flocks of critics hover here to-day, As vultures wait on armies for their prey, All gaping for the carcase of a play!
— from A Book of the Play Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character by Dutton Cook

She was a frail, little, old woman, one of those women who, after a robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines remaining.
— from Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod by James A. Cooper

He and Jo keep us merry, for we get pretty blue sometimes, and feel like orphans, with you so far away.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

she had asked Gowan; and when he had produced the articles, she had bent over the table and dashed a few lines off with an unsteady yet determined hand.
— from Vagabondia 1884 by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The commonest species form bright-green discs, adhering firmly to the stems and floating leaves of water lilies and other aquatics.
— from Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany For High Schools and Elementary College Courses by Douglas Houghton Campbell

I've been reading for over a year now—on a few lines, on what I consider the essential lines.”
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

It was a fairly large one, with a mass of roots sticking up at one end.
— from The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest by John Henry Goldfrap