The rise in the money price of all commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

It makes no real difference whether man’s belief in a universe enmeshed in serpent-coils be expressed in the Hindu’s cowering adoration of [ 418 ] the venomous potentate, or the christian’s imprecation upon it: fundamentally it is serpent-worship in each case.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

A calm ensued; when, still confident that the stranger was an Englishman, Porter dispatched a cutter, not to board the enemy, but drive back his boats engaged in towing him.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

these Stones are almost invariably regular parallelepipeds, of unequal Sizes in the wall, but equal in their horizontal ranges, at least as to debth.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

I heard Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I’d have broken everything in the house.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

The banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of steps.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

‘Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads her to actions which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, and which can give her no other pleasure than the gratification of an internal faculty.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

The difficulties, accordingly, which the Bank of England, which the principal bankers in London, and which even the more prudent Scotch banks began, after a certain time, and when all of them had already gone too far, to make about discounting, not only alarmed, but enraged, in the highest degree, those projectors.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

And besides, everybody in the house knows that I've nothing to reproach myself with.
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Volume 1 by Émile Zola

This document was in the form of a testament, in which he solemnly ("with death, judgment and eternity in view") gave, covenanted, and made over himself, soul and body, all his faculties, all his influence in this world, all the worldly goods with which he might be endowed, into the hands of his Creator, Preserver, and Constant Benefactor, to be his forever, and at [28] his disposal.
— from Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Had it been secured, the savages would soon have battered it in by sheer weight of numbers; but even in the heat of the pursuit the natives paused and looked askance at the mute invitation to enter.
— from The Nameless Island: A Story of Some Modern Robinson Crusoes by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

This it had also been even in the high torrent of her emotion when she would have no more of his kisses and seemed in that moment to him the substance of unyielding stone his temperature of passion had heated but a moment and no more.
— from The Green Bough by E. Temple (Ernest Temple) Thurston

For nearly four years, forced to it by our enemies, we have been engaged in the hardest struggle history records.
— from New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, No. 1, July 1918 by Various

But even if they have, he tells us, "Suppose it be conceded that by law it was abolished—could that law be perpetual?
— from Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3) by Theodore Parker

At present, orphan-houses have been abolished, since it has been shown, by many years’ experience, that the children cannot be educated in them healthy and at a sufficiently cheap rate.
— from A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 2 (of 2) by Johann Beckmann

That I who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by everybody in the house, and who had never been required to do anything, but cultivate my mind , should have to pass all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of bread , which mightn't turn out bread after all!
— from Stories of Authors, British and American by Edwin Watts Chubb

They were outwardly respectable citizens, well clad and cleanly; but a judge of faces would have read little hope for Birdy Edwards in those hard mouths and remorseless eyes.
— from The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle