So went home, and friends again as to that business; but the words I could not get out of my mind, and so went to bed at night discontented, and she came to bed to me, but all would not make me friends, but sleep and rise in the morning angry.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

A surface terminates a solid; a line terminates a surface; a point terminates a line; but I assert, that if the ideas of a point, line or surface were not indivisible, it is impossible we should ever conceive these terminations: For let these ideas be supposed infinitely divisible; and then let the fancy endeavour to fix itself on the idea of the last surface, line or point; it immediately finds this idea to break into parts; and upon its seizing the last of these parts, it loses its hold by a new division, and so on in infinitum, without any possibility of its arriving at a concluding idea.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

with Introduction and Notes by P. Sidney, 1906; Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson, 1889. H2 anchor EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR TO THE MOST LEARNED, AND MY HONOURED FRIEND MASTER CAMDEN CLARENCIEUX SIR,—There are, no doubt, a supercilious race in the world, who will esteem all office, done you in this kind, an injury; so solemn a vice it is with them to use the authority of their ignorance, to the crying down of Poetry, or the professors: but my gratitude must not leave to correct their error; since I am none of those that can suffer the benefits conferred upon my youth to perish with my age.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

His was a strange nature, never utterly to be known; a nature deep and still, unfathomable to the outer world, whose values he had long transcended.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

By no means, says Cotta, for we have time enough on our hands; besides that, we are now discussing a subject which should be preferred even to serious business.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ayaw nag daska ang sáku kay naglirì na sa kapunù, Don’t fill the sack further because it’s so full it’s bursting.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

It is sometimes advisable, when you are not drawing a subject that demands a clear hard line, but where more sympathetic qualities are wanted, to have a wad of several sheets of paper under the one you are working on, pinned on the drawing-board.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

I am free as the air, and never do a stroke of work; and, as for fodder, I have only to go to the hills and there I find far more than enough for my needs.
— from Aesop's Fables; a new translation by Aesop

Christie ran and admitted an impetuous, stout gentleman, who appeared to be incensed against the elements, for he burst in as if blown, shook himself like a Newfoundland dog, and said all in one breath: "You're the new girl, are you?
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

Then she starts in fear, and a nameless dread, As she thinks of her mother o'er and o'er, Keeping lone watch with one lying dead, In that fearful stillness, behind the door;.
— from Victor Roy, a Masonic Poem by Harriet Annie Wilkins

'If they own'd the King of Ebronia voluntarily, and acknowledg'd his Right as we thought they had; how then can this young Gentleman have a Title, unless they have found out a new Division, and so will have two Kings of Ebronia , make them Partners, and have a Gallunarian King of Ebronia , and a Mogenite King of Ebronia , both together?
— from The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon by Daniel Defoe

The great people are fond of fine gardens and sumptuous baths, and take care to have roomy houses to accommodate their retinues; but in these you never see a bright verandah, or a hall worth looking at, nor does any sign of grandeur attract one’s attention.
— from The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq

In this case, “obliquo” may express a new direction, and some obstacle in the turn the river takes, where the water would for a moment seem to labour , “laborare fugax,” expressing its desire to escape.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847 by Various

It should also be observed, that the possession of leaves with sensitive petioles, and with the consequent power of clasping an object, would be of comparatively little use to a plant, unless associated with revolving internodes, by which the leaves are brought into contact with a support; although no doubt a scrambling plant would be apt, as Professor Jaeger has remarked, to rest on other plants by its leaves.
— from The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants by Charles Darwin

"Jessie says her tastes are not domestic, and she has always had enough to do teaching us, and looking after the little ones."
— from The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 by Various

She never frowned, or looked black, or had headaches, or couldn't go on, or wouldn't stay still, or turned herself into a Niobean deluge, as some ladies, and very nice ladies too, will sometimes do on their travels.
— from The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope

Nevertheless, as Nancy dashed around she did make a real effort to adjust the disordered room, for her pride was now prompting her.
— from Nancy Brandon by Lilian Garis