For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or security in any; on what course will you pitch, how resolve? to be a divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be a wrangler; to be a physician, [1791] pudet lotii , 'tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a beggar; a poet, esurit , an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a [1792] liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the pot's never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree in the wood to hang himself; I can show no state of life to give content.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

He is (though a priest and prelate) a most amiable man.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Not to speak of the money, which was as plentiful as mud, all things, whether they were to be found in the world or not, were they not heaped up like hills, and collected like the waters of the sea?
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

Rhasis enjoins continual conference to such melancholy men, perpetual discourse of some history, tale, poem, news, &c., alternos sermones edere ac bibere, aeque jucundum quam cibus, sive potus , which feeds the mind as meat and drink doth the body, and pleaseth as much: and therefore the said Rhasis, not without good cause, would have somebody still talk seriously, or dispute with them, and sometimes
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

he must say that B God did what was just and right, and they were the better for being punished; but that those who are punished are miserable, and that God is the author of their misery—the poet is not to be permitted to say; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be C strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse or prose by any one whether old or young in any well-ordered commonwealth.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

"One particular request I desire to make while my brain is yet clear, for, by to-morrow, or the day after, it will, as you know, have failed, and even now I am not sure whether I am expressing myself sensibly, seeing that, as I was lying here just now, I seemed to see a pack of red dogs leaping around me, and yourself making a point at me as a dog does at a partridge.
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

After dinner to the Duke of Albemarle’s again, and so to the Swan, and there ‘demeurais un peu’de temps con la fille’, and so to the Harp and Ball, and alone ‘demeurais un peu de temps baisant la’, and so away home and late at the office about letters, and so home, resolving from this night forwards to close all my letters, if possible, and end all my business at the office by daylight, and I shall go near to do it and put all my affairs in the world in good order, the season growing so sickly, that it is much to be feared how a man can escape having a share with others in it, for which the good Lord God bless me, or to be fitted to receive it.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

So, when the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him on persuading the squire to consent.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

The angels now come (Psa 107) down to behold the sight, and rejoice to see a bit of dust and ashes to overcome principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion.
— from Works of John Bunyan — Complete by John Bunyan

"There are some gentlemen," said he, "who live among the eagles on the high mountain peaks, beyond the limit of perpetual frost, and they see the lineaments in the face of freedom so much clearer than I do, whenever any measure comes here that seems almost to grasp our purpose, they rise and tell us it is all poor and mean and a surrender of liberty."
— from History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States by William Horatio Barnes

If a person says a sentence containing the word lobo in either signification before a member of the sept while he is eating, he will throw away the food before him as if it were contaminated and prepare a meal afresh.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell

So then he touched it again in another place and made another spot, and in another place and made another spot, and in a lot of places and made a lot of spots, and he made some stripes, too—mostly on top of the stove, which was nice and smooth to mark on, though he made some on the pipe.
— from The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book Being a continuation of stories about the Hollow Tree and Deep Woods people by Albert Bigelow Paine

Most mournful will it be, should the clansmen of the Highlands have been cleared away, ejected, exiled, in deference to a political, a moral, a social, and an economical mistake,—a suggestion not of philosophy, but of mammon,—a system in which the demon of sordidness assumed the shape of the angel of civilization and of light.”
— from The History of the Highland Clearances Second Edition, Altered and Revised by Alexander Mackenzie

In my walk I had picked up a numerous attendance for everyone I met followed me; so that I had collected such a crowd that the heat was scarce bearable, everyone endeavouring to get a look to satisfy their curiosity: they however carefully avoided pressing against me, and welcomed me with cheerful countenances and great good nature.
— from A Voyage to the South Sea Undertaken by command of His Majesty for the purpose of conveying the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies in His Majesty's ship the Bounty commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh; including an account of the mutiny on board the said ship and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew in the ship's boat from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies by William Bligh

And then the Colonel brought out pencil and paper and drew pictures of Boney and of the Duke, and of Bheels and Pindarrees and Mahrattas and other strange people against whom he had fought in India.
— from The Drummer's Coat by Fortescue, J. W. (John William), Sir

She was suffering from their anomalous position as much as he, but she had the means of enjoying it while he had not.
— from A Pair of Patient Lovers by William Dean Howells

One day a voice floated so pure and free Above his music, that he turned to see What angel sang, and saw before his eyes, What made his heart leap with a strange surprise, His own White Maiden, calm, and pure, and mild, As in his childish dreams she sang and smiled; Her eyes raised up to Heaven, her lips apart, And music overflowing from her heart.
— from Legends and Lyrics. Part 1 by Adelaide Anne Procter

I had to fix 115 upon canvas this pale silhouette which haunted my dreams, my first impression of which was so clear that by shutting my eyes I could see her before me just as she appeared—upon the stage, fine and fairylike in her youth and genius beneath her make-up, with the blue costume of her part; then in her dressing-room, by turns tender and satirical, with the picturesque disorder around her which betrayed the thousand small miseries of her calling; then along the wall of the Invalides under the stars of that December night, leaning on my arm, pale and magnified as if she were transfigured by the sadness of her confidences; and last of all at home, tragic and trembling at the deceit practised upon her?
— from The Blue Duchess by Paul Bourget