So home by hackney-coach, which is become a very dangerous passage now-a-days, the sickness increasing mightily, and to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

“I suppose,” thought I, “judging from the plainness of the servant and carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the better; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very miserable with them.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

Malice or fanaticism had suggested to an African, deeply skilled in the knowledge of futurity, a very dangerous prediction, that Macrinus and his son were destined to reign over the empire.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

They must be of a very different power if they can look upon that incorporeal nature which is not contained in any place, but is all in every place.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

This was a very disagreeable piece of news to the virtuoso, who protested she would stuff her ears with cotton when she went to bed, and take a dose of opium to make her sleep the more sound, that she might not be disturbed and distracted by the clamour of the brutes.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country?
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

For instance, Mr. Hook observed, as is mentioned in his Micrographia , that a faint yellow Plate of Muscovy Glass laid upon a blue one, constituted a very deep purple.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

A rich man's son in these days of ours occupies a very difficult position.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

If the action we now know follows a very damaging piece of testimony, the defendant is condemned thereby; if it follows excusive testimony he is declared innocent.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

Great business must be wrought ere noon: Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vaporous drop profound; I'll catch it ere it come to ground: And that, distill'd by magic sleights, Shall raise such artificial sprites, As, by the strength of their illusion, Shall draw him on to his confusion: He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
— from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

To such a mind, ridicule is a venomed dart, piercing and poisoning, and pride but inflames the wound.
— from Alone by Marion Harland

Ella Barnwell, the young, the beautiful, and accomplished heiress, was a very different personage from poor Ella Barnwell the bankrupt's daughter; and those who had fawned upon and flattered and courted the one, now saw proper to pass the other by in silent contempt.
— from Ella Barnwell A Historical Romance of Border Life by Emerson Bennett

All agreed that it was a very difficult place to reach; and none of them had ever been there.
— from Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru by Hiram Bingham

Here was a very definite promise, although it had been made in half-ignorance, and she understood clearly that Ruth meant to make her keep it.
— from The Governess by Julie M. Lippmann

They are a very difficult people to understand.
— from Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General by Charles James Lever

To a very different purport is another passage in the Autobiography, which is at the same time a striking commentary on Wordsworth's remark that Goethe's poetry was "not inevitable enough.
— from The Youth of Goethe by Peter Hume Brown

The Komtis claim to be of the same status as Banias and to belong to the Vaishya division of the Aryans, but this is a very doubtful pretension.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell

Commodore Keppel stated in his letter, of the 13th of April, 1761, to the Right Honorable Mr. Secretary Pitt, afterwards created the Earl of Chatham, that "One of the flat boats landed sixty of Erskine's grenadiers ( SIXTY-SEVENTH regiment), who got up a very difficult place to the top of the hills, where they formed with great skill, but were so immediately routed by a much more numerous body of the enemy, that all attempts to succour them were ineffectual, any further than the boats bringing from the rocks about twenty of them."
— from Historical record of the Sixty-Seventh, or the South Hampshire Regiment Containing an account of the formation of the regiment in 1758, and of its subsequent services to 1849 by Richard Cannon

He was the representative of his nation, too; there was much to be settled between his Government and the King's; and in all respects, in outward circumstances, he felt he was a very different person at the King's Court than the obscure priest and physician that had come there at first.
— from A Noble Queen: A Romance of Indian History (Volume 3 of 3) by Meadows Taylor