At these meetings we talked the matter over; told our hopes and fears, and the difficulties discovered or imagined; and, like men of sense, we counted the cost of the enterprise to which we were committing ourselves.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

The little book loses none of its interest through the criticism which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one people to another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline is still clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, books, literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come to have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk and adventure as that of its own heroes.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

So our business here being ayre, this is the best way, only with a little mixture of statues, or pots, which may be handsome, and so filled with another pot of such and such a flower or greene as the season of the year will bear.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

But in answer to this, Didius the great church lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis, doth maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no argument—nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a syllogism;—but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it—so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Galba the emperor was crook-backed, Epictetus lame: that great Alexander a little man of stature,
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

"May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?" "Pray sit down," said Mary; "you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Vera Iosifovna, white-haired and looking much older, shook Startsev's hand, sighed affectedly, and said: "You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

At last my own silence and the stillness round me reminded me that I was not there to listen, but to speak.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

Luckily however the guide, a little man on sturdy legs, said he knew of a house called Shô-ô-tei (Hall of the Old Man of the Pine Tree), where we might as well call, since it lay on our road home.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

The little book loses none of its interest through the criticism which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one people to another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline is still clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, books, literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come to [17] have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk and adventure as that of its own heroes.
— from The Renaissance: studies in art and poetry by Walter Pater

In one sense, the pupil's witty answer might be given by a large majority of sublunary beings.
— from From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon by Jules Verne

At the further extremity of each lever, and perpendicular to it, is fixed a hollow pestle, directly over a large mortar of stone or iron sunk into the ground; the other extremity extending beyond the wall, being pressed upon by the cogs of the axis in its revolution, elevates the pestle, which by its own gravity falls into the mortar.
— from Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton by Barrow, John, Sir

His despised Irish father perhaps had slipped into the otherwise invisible and limp threads of his Fates a little mesh of spiritual reality, which, dormant, unrecognized, and even scorned by him, came finally to give him all his valour and worth.
— from Concerning Lafcadio Hearn; With a Bibliography by Laura Stedman by George M. (George Milbrey) Gould

[Pg 309] A long moment of silence followed this announcement.
— from Peggy Owen and Liberty by Lucy Foster Madison

God had evidently reserved her for another career; and, like many other spinsters, she was unquestionably respectable, and evidently enjoyed more real happiness, and was more extensively useful, than numbers of married females.
— from Model Women by William Anderson

Now it may be as well to state here that Vincent Holroyd was as guiltless as Mark himself of any intention to portray Mr. Humpage in the pages of 'Illusion'; he had indeed heard of him from the Langtons, but the resemblances in the imaginary solicitor to Dolly's godfather were few and trivial enough, and, like most of such half-unconscious reminiscences, required the aid of a malicious dulness to pass as anything more than mere coincidences.
— from The Giant's Robe by F. Anstey

"He is almost like my own son."
— from Juggernaut by Alice Campbell

What happened was probably a large migration of students, part of whom remained behind when peace between town and gown in Bologna was restored.
— from Jerome Cardan: A Biographical Study by W. G. (William George) Waters