“Le mieux,” says a French proverb, “est l’ennemi du bien,” and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound interest until they amounted to seventy-seven.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

Mrs. Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Rushworth, was ready to lead the way.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

quae dat parasitis, adulatoribus, inanium voluptatum artificibus generosis et otiosis tanta munera prodigit, at contra agricolis, carbonariis, aurigis, fabris, &c. nihil prospicit, sed eorum abusa labore florentia aetatis fame penset et aerumnis, Mor.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The Hamlet of a famed performer , etc. Macready.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man aims for power; everyone desires to be a dictator, if possible; moreover, few would not sacrifice the good of others to attain their own ends."
— from The International Jew : The World's Foremost Problem by Anonymous

The civil regulations of this kingdom and metropolis are taken from very different models from those of England, except in a few particular establishments, the necessary consequences of the union.—Their college of justice is a bench of great dignity, filled with judges of character and ability.—I have heard some causes tried before this venerable tribunal; and was very much pleased with the pleadings of their advocates, who are by no means deficient either in argument or elocution.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

When a few particular expressions are urged too rigidly, and unthought of consequences drawn from some assertions, and no regard is had to the general intent and scope of an author, it is no difficult matter to find errors in any book.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix'd a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Héloïse

"A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom's going to school.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

When we had finished the rounds, however, he called for remuneration—said he hoped the gentlemen would give him a trifle in the way of a few piastres (equivalent to a few five cent pieces.)
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

When his brief story was ended, the father of the sick woman stepped forth, and, in a few pithy expressions, related, in his turn, what he knew.
— from The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

The sin and scandal of manifest and frequent perjuries engaged the magistrates to remove these dangerous temptations; and to supply the defects of human testimony by the famous experiments of fire and water.
— from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 3 by Edward Gibbon

Son of a father to whom history will certainly grant extenuating circumstances, but as worthy of esteem as his father was of blame; possessing all the private virtues and several of the public virtues; careful of his health, his fortune, his person, and his business affairs; knowing the value of a minute, but not always the value of a year; sober, serious, peaceful, and patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys whose business it was to show the conjugal couch to the cits,—a regular ostentation which had grown useful after the old illegitimate displays of the elder branch; acquainted with all the languages of Europe, and, what is rarer still, with all the languages of all the interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the "middle classes," but surpassing them, and in every way greater; possessing the excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he sprang, of claiming merit for his personal value, and very particular on the question of his race by declaring himself an Orléans and not a Bourbon; a thorough first prince of the blood, so long as he had only been Most Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois on the day when he became His Majesty; diffuse in public, and concise in private life; branded as a miser, but not proved to be one; in reality, one of those saving men who are easily prodigal to satisfy their caprices or their duty; well read and caring but little for literature; a gentleman but not a cavalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a seductive speaker, a statesman who had lost his illusions, cold-hearted, swayed by the immediate interest, governing from hand to mouth; incapable of rancor and of gratitude; pitilessly employing superiorities upon mediocrities, and clever in confounding by parliamentary majorities those mysterious unanimities which growl hoarsely beneath thrones; expansive, at times imprudent in his expansiveness, but displaying marvellous skill in his imprudence; fertile in expedients, faces, and masks; terrifying France by Europe, and Europe by France; loving his country undeniably, but preferring his family; valuing domination more than authority, and authority more than dignity; a temperament which has this mournful feature about it, that by turning everything to success it admits of craft and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but at the same time has this advantage, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the State from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, and indefatigable; contradicting himself at times, and belying himself; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp and paying Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction; inaccessible to despondency, to fatigue, to a taste for the beautiful and ideal, to rash generosity, to Utopias, chimeras, anger, vanity, and fear; possessing every form of personal bravery; a general at Valmy, a private at Jemmappes; eight times attacked by regicides, and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, and courageous as a thinker; merely anxious about the chances of a European convulsion, and unfitted for great political adventures; ever ready to risk his life, but not his work; disguising his will in influence for the sake of being obeyed as an intellect rather than as king; gifted with observation and not with divination; paying but slight attention to minds, but a good judge of men,—that is to say, requiring to see ere he could judge; endowed with prompt and penetrating sense, practical wisdom, fluent tongue, and a prodigious memory, and incessantly drawing on that memory, his sole similitude with Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing facts, details, dates, and proper names, but ignorant of the various passions and tendencies of the crowd, the internal aspirations and concealed agitation of minds,—in one word, of all that may be called the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but agreeing little with the lower strata of French society; getting out of scrapes by skill; governing too much and not reigning sufficiently; his own Prime Minister; excellent in the art of setting up the littleness of realities as an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling with a true creative faculty of civilization, order, and organization, I do not know what pettifogging temper and chicanery; the founder of a family and at the same time its man-of-law; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney in him; but, on the whole, as a lofty and original figure, as a prince who managed to acquire power in spite of the anxiety of France, and influence in spite of the jealousy of Europe,—Louis Philippe would be ranked among the eminent men of his age, and among the most illustrious governors known in history, if he had loved glory a little, and had a feeling for what is grand to the same extent that he had a feeling for what is useful.
— from Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic by Victor Hugo

The acting and re-acting, indeed, of every branch of the System, upon each other, interweaves so thoroughly the lessons of Scripture with the feelings and thoughts of their minds, and associates them so closely with the common circumstances of life, that it is almost impossible that either the portions of the Bible which they have thus learned, or the practical lessons thus drawn from them, should, at any future period, escape from their remembrance.
— from A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education by James Gall

Totumque incauta per agmen Fæmineo prædæ et spoliorum ardebat amore.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

At Forum Pompeji especially there is almost a whole city to be seen, and the ancients have told us so much about the eruption which caused its destruction that every traveller of intelligence who proceeds to Naples dare scarcely leave it without having made an examination of these ruins.
— from The Admiral: A Romance of Nelson in the Year of the Nile by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

In the Computation of the Number of Members for a Province a fractional Part not exceeding One Half of the whole Number requisite for entitling the Province to a Member shall be disregarded; but a fractional Part exceeding One Half of that Number shall be equivalent to the whole Number: (4.)
— from The British North America Act, 1867 by Anonymous

Mrs. Sutherland's coffee house, was at this time, one of the chief places of resort for Public Committees and Societies, as well as for Public entertainments; concerts were held here throughout the winter, commencing in September.
— from History of Halifax City by Thomas B. Akins