And I run up with a pat of butter, for it'd be a poor thing to have you eating your spuds dry, and you after running a great way since you did destroy your da. CHRISTY.
— from The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three Acts by J. M. (John Millington) Synge

This has been an invariable habit of his, which the Bernacchi school probably entails; for he is a pupil of Bernacchi's.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The new ideal, however, can never entirely obliterate the old and primary one, because the initial functions which the old Adam exclusively represented remain imbedded in the new life, and are its physical basis.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

A collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

O-liver saw her most often at the shop, when he stopped in for a pot of beans—eating them on the spot and discoursing on many things.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey

It serves no purpose to fill a page of biography with genealogical details when the hero’s course in life was in no way affected by the accident of who was his grandfather.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

A portion of this was bruised, and boiled with some flour, sugar, and spices, making altogether a palatable pottage; and with a promise of better fare on the morrow, it was set before the young Rao and his followers, who, after making a good repast, soon forgot Chitor in sleep.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

"Can you give me a pound of butter?"
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

No; a bell rang in the prison, the grating of the door opened, and an arm held out to the prisoner a pewter porringer and a piece of bread.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

A little motherless housekeeper crying because her father scolded her in public for a piece of bad cookery.
— from Phoebe, Junior by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Then every one agreed that it was a piece of bravado.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In response to my questions Japanese friends have uniformly assured me that they are not accustomed to think of the Japanese as possessed of better memories than the people of the West.
— from Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic by Sidney Lewis Gulick

III The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the open door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the strings of things hanging from the smoke-browned rafters—beans, red pepper-pods, and twists of homegrown tobacco, the girl's eyes taking in the old spinning-wheel in the corner, the piles of brilliantly figured quilts between the foot-boards of the two beds ranged along one side of the room, and the boy's, catching eagerly the butt of a big revolver projecting from the mantel-piece, a Winchester standing in one corner, a long, old-fashioned squirrel rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers over the front door, and a bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall of the back porch.
— from The Heart of the Hills by Fox, John, Jr.

Half a dozen sheep had been given to the returning band; everywhere resounded the grinding of coffee; men passed, carrying pitchers of leban and panniers of bread cakes hot from their simple oven.
— from Tancred; Or, The New Crusade by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

In a word, one great sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers were to be conveyed ashore.
— from Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbours brought her a piece of beef: ‘Ever so much obleeged, but don’t forget me when you come to kill a pig.’—Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan’t clean James Bruce’s pew, or what was his before he turned Second Advent.
— from The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

[2] The house at present occupied by Chief Justice Allen.
— from Lady Rosamond's Secret: A Romance of Fredericton by Rebecca Agatha Armour

It would seem as if, with all the suggestions of Easter, that no one would need anything but a paint-box and a pack of blank cards to interest them at this season.
— from Home Amusements by M. E. W. (Mary Elizabeth Wilson) Sherwood

Sfacchinársi, to forsake or leaue off to be a porter or base knaue, that is, to become from a iack to a gentleman.
— from Queen Anna's New World of Words; or, Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues by John Florio