I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

I don’t pretend to be a judge of such matters, but it seems to me, that this plan of Mrs. Graham’s, as you describe it, Mrs. Markham, extraordinary as it may be, is not without its advantages; for here you see the child is delivered at once from temptation; he has no secret curiosity, no hankering desire; he is as well acquainted with the tempting liquors as he ever wishes to be; and is thoroughly disgusted with them, without having suffered from their effects.’
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Else, instead of a gallant gentleman in a gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin!
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Were your friends, the Allens, still in Bath, you might go to them with comparative ease; a few hours would take you there; but a journey of seventy miles, to be taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!”
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

It would be much more easy to be born a Jackson, or something of that sort, one would think.’
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

Now the establishment of courts of justice may be regarded as a choice of magistrates, for every magistrate must also be a judge of some things; and the judge, though he be not a magistrate, yet in certain respects is a very important magistrate on the day on which he is determining a suit.
— from Laws by Plato

Now the reason the nation blundered into taking the Philippines was that it believed the Filipinos to be, not a people, but a jumble of savage tribes.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

But it was So unprepared for, I half thought it might be a joke.' 'Oh, she's fond of these surprises,' Mrs. Baxendale said, in a tone of good-natured allowance.
— from A Life's Morning by George Gissing

Nothing but a job or some knavery can keep them serious for ten minutes together.(1) Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship necessary to make a man tolerated, to enable him to pass as a cypher, or be admitted as a mere numerical unit, in any corporate body: to be a leader and dictator he must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in every dirty work.
— from Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners by William Hazlitt

The fancy-free Sylvia reddened, pouted, tossed back her head, and hardly deigned a farewell word of thanks or civility to the lame man; she was at an age to be affronted by any jokes on such a subject.
— from Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 1 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Suppose they were sent to South Carolina to be tried by a jury of Slaveholders, or 64 still worse, without change of place, to be tried by a court deadly hostile to freedom,—wresting law and perverting justice and "enlarging testimony," personally inimical to these gentlemen; suppose that the Slave-hunter whose "process" was alleged to be resisted, was kinsman to the court, and the judge had a near relation put on the jury—what opportunity would there be for justice; what expectation of it?
— from The Trial of Theodore Parker For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the Defence by Theodore Parker

Least of all was he qualified to be a judge of Shakespear, who ‘alone is high fantastical.’
— from The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12) by William Hazlitt

Into this brine a jet of steam is then directed, and the stirrer is set to work for about half an hour, until the liquid is in a thoroughly boiling condition, in which state it must be kept until the end of the process.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 by Various

Hayden, C. B. American Journal of Science and Arts , 1843, vol.
— from Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns by Edwin Swift Balch

From New York to Boston, a journey of six hours, in the second week of December, not a blade of green grass was to be seen.
— from Henry Irving's Impressions of America Narrated in a Series of Sketches, Chronicles, and Conversations by Joseph Hatton