Here, in a country parish, he lived discontentedly, longing for the joys of London and the Mermaid Tavern, his bachelor establishment consisting of an old housekeeper, a cat, a dog, a goose, a tame lamb, one hen,--for which he thanked God in poetry because she laid an egg every day,--and a pet pig that drank beer with Herrick out of a tankard.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

They have pitch'd a toil: I am tolling in a pitch- pitch that defiles.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Straight , an American phrase peculiar to dram-drinkers; similar to our word NEAT , which see .
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

The waters in hotter countries, as in Turkey, Persia, India, within the tropics, are frequently purer than ours in the north, more subtile, thin, and lighter, as our merchants observe, by four ounces in a pound, pleasanter to drink, as good as our beer, and some of them, as Choaspis in Persia, preferred by the Persian kings, before wine itself.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

In this view belief is not a positive phenomenon, though doubt and disbelief are so.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

He had no very great difficulty to make her believe that he was entirely innocent of an offence so foreign to his character; but she had a great deal to hinder him from going instantly home, and putting Partridge to death, which he more than once swore he would do.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

'What then is the reason for applying to a particular person to do that which any one may do as well?' JOHNSON.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

On the other side her bed was bounded by the window: she had the street beneath her eyes, and would read in it from morning to night to divert the tedium of her life, like a Persian prince, the daily but immemorial chronicles of Combray, which she would discuss in detail afterwards with Françoise.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

I was not at present provided to do.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The conductor came and asked whether everything was all right, governor, and people passed the door deliberately, staring in to get a glimpse of the great man; and Lydia could see that they were murmuring, "That's Albee, you know, he's going down to testify."
— from Manslaughter by Alice Duer Miller

It is a puzzling problem to decide whether this discretionary power, throughout its whole existence, has done most mischief in the character of impostor upon the Department, or seducer to contractors.
— from Perley's Reminiscences, v. 1-2 of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis by Benjamin Perley Poore

[Pg 259] in regard to his position, not as a person privileged to do whatever he may choose, but rather as a person to whom is intrusted the great task of taking care of the people over whom he reigns.
— from A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream Dialogues by Kencho Suematsu

It was mid-afternoon when they crossed the Brandywine bar and paddled past the docks of Wilmington.
— from The Black Buccaneer by Stephen W. (Stephen Warren) Meader

All phenomena present two distinct and opposite aspects or phases which we call cause and effect ; and so in dynamical and structural geology we are really studying the opposite sides of essentially the same classes of phenomena.
— from Common Minerals and Rocks by William O. (William Otis) Crosby

Within a month she had blossomed into "the most high and puissante Princess, the Duchess of Kingston," thus realising her childish ambition.
— from Love Romances of the Aristocracy by Thornton Hall

A cunning politician often lurks under the clerical robe; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary's shelf; and instead of a peaceful sermon, the simple seeker after righteousness has often a political pamphlet thrust down his throat, labeled with a pious text from Scripture.
— from Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete by Washington Irving

That in the title page and preface to the said work, your Honourable sex are described and classified as animals; and although your Dedicator is not at present prepared to deny that you are animals, still he humbly submits that it is not polite to call you so.
— from Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People by Charles Dickens

In the Arthropoda for instance the generative ducts, where provided with anteriorly placed openings, as in the Crustacea, Arachnida and the Chilognathous Myriapoda, the Pœcilopoda, etc., may possibly be of this nature, but the data for deciding this point are so scanty that it is not at present possible to do more than frame conjectures.
— from The Works of Francis Maitland Balfour, Volume 3 (of 4) A Treatise on Comparative Embryology: Vertebrata by Francis M. (Francis Maitland) Balfour

But they are bound to speak decent English,—unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian’s head are pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.
— from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes