The ablest man is dragged down by the weakest and dullest, who necessarily sets the standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

A marble is dropped “down the dolly,” and stops in one of the small holes or pits (numbered) on the board.
— from A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James. by John Camden Hotten

But my Lord Ashly, I observe, is a most clear man in matters of accounts, and most ingeniously did discourse and explain all matters.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Starkad was induced by this to let Helge go scot-free; saying that a man whose ready and assured courage so surely betokened manliness, ought to be spared; for he vowed that a man ill deserved death whose brave spirit was graced with such a dogged will to resist.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

V. By conflicting emotions I mean those which draw a man in different directions, though they are of the same kind, such as luxury and avarice, which are both species of love, and are contraries, not by nature, but by accident.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

A modest inoffensive deportment does not necessarily imply valour; neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that quality.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

Eugenia switched her skirts disdainfully through the hall, and mounted in dignified disgust.
— from The Little Colonel's House Party by Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston

In "The Factors of Organic Evolution" ( Essays , 454-8), I have given various reasons for inferring that the genesis of the nervous system cannot be due to survival of the fittest; but that it is due to the direct effects of converse between the surface and the environment; and that thus only is to be explained the strange fact that the nervous centres are originally superficial, and migrate inwards during development.
— from The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2) by Herbert Spencer

I was never for a moment in danger.” doc>
— from A Charmed Life by Richard Harding Davis

I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and moved in different directions.
— from A Pair of Patient Lovers by William Dean Howells

From this time, in the animals which are most seriously affected, the appetite ceases, the rumination becomes irregular and partial, whilst in some others the appetite and rumination are maintained in different degrees.
— from On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment by Honoré Bourguignon

Nicholson was now more and more in demand, doing guerilla service, or engaged in such useful work as collecting boats for Sir Joseph Thackwell to cross the Chenab River and acting as intelligence officer to the forces.
— from John Nicholson, the Lion of the Punjaub by R. E. Cholmeley

Dē ōrnandā īnstruendāque urbe, item dē tuendō ampliandōque 145 imperiō plūra ac māiōra in diēs dēstinābat: imprīmīs iūs cīvīle ad certum modum redigere 9 atque ex immēnsā lēgum cōpiā 93 optima quaeque et necessāria in paucissimōs cōnferre librōs; bibliothēcās Graecās et
— from Selections from Viri Romae by C. F. L'Homond

I thought of that as soon as I seen that white thing in the bushes and thought if it caught me like that and moaned I’d drop down dead on the spot.
— from Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

[192] of its groves of stately trees, its merle and mavis, its daisies damasking the green, its spreading vines upon the "cleeves," its ripening fruits: The Poets Paradice this is, To which but few can come; The Muses onely bower of blisse, Their Deare Elizium.
— from Francis Beaumont: Dramatist A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, And of His Association with John Fletcher by Charles Mills Gayley

He bowed his head for a moment in deep dejection, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he smiled into her stern eyes a little wistfully.
— from Molly Brown's Orchard Home by Nell Speed