Bronn also insists that distinct species never differ from each other in single characters, but in many parts; and he asks, how it always comes that many parts of the organisation should have been modified at the same time through variation and natural selection?
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

“But I must point out to your majesty that by the end of the century the difference will be of twelve days, not eleven.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I snapped her pic and dropped the camera back in my pocket.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

I have now been here nearly a fortnight, and, but for one disturbing care, the haunting dread of discovery, I am comfortably settled in my new home: Frederick has supplied me with all requisite furniture and painting materials: Rachel has sold most of my clothes for me, in a distant town, and procured me a wardrobe more suitable to my present position: I have a second-hand piano, and a tolerably well-stocked bookcase in my parlour; and my other room has assumed quite a professional, business-like appearance already.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

What It Is Errors Brought Into Religion From Aristotles Metaphysiques Errors Concerning Abstract Essences Nunc-stans One Body In Many Places, And Many Bodies In One Place At Once Absurdities In Naturall Philosophy, As Gravity The Cause Of Heavinesse Quantity Put Into Body Already Made Powring In Of Soules Ubiquity Of Apparition Will, The Cause Of Willing Ignorance An Occult Cause One Makes The Things Incongruent, Another The Incongruity Private Appetite
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness.
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

I am not more bankrupt in moral purpose than you.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

I see nothing very improbable in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in support of it to the passage in v. i. as found in Q1; for that passage does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported) imagined Hamlet as a lad.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

I by water to Deptford, thinking to have seen my valentine, but I could not, and so come back again, and to the office, where a little business, and thence with Captain Cocke, and there drank a cup of good drink, which I am fain to allow myself during this plague time, by advice of all, and not contrary to my oathe, my physician being dead, and chyrurgeon out of the way, whose advice I am obliged to take, and so by water home and eat my supper, and to bed, being in much pain to think what I shall do this winter time; for go every day to Woolwich I cannot, without endangering my life; and staying from my wife at Greenwich is not handsome. 16th.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

I had with me a bag containing nuggets, dust and money, which I was to deliver to Smirker; if he searched me and found that bag in my pocket, he would know that I had deceived him—that I was the real White-horse Fred—and my life wouldn’t [239] be worth a moment’s purchase.
— from Julian Mortimer: A Brave Boy's Struggle for Home and Fortune by Harry Castlemon

"It was not designedly done, but in my passion, for which I am heartily sorry.
— from The Book of Buried Treasure Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, etc., which are sought for to this day by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Of these about fourteen million are engaged in agriculture and allied industries, while more than eleven million are busy in manufacturing pursuits.
— from Problems in American Democracy by Thames Williamson

She gave me that look which always rebuked me—always put me back in my place—but which, it seemed to me, was a little less severe than ever before.
— from The Gold Bag by Carolyn Wells

When again winter has fled, but before the grassy green appears, or other vegetation has ventured to peep above the earth, they are bespeckled in many places with a species of erythronium , a pretty lilaceous little flower, which springs from the ground already developed, between a pair of lanceolate leaves, and is soon after in full bloom.
— from Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, 1831-1839, part 2 by Josiah Gregg

To go away is what first occurs to me, but what reason can I give Caroline and my father for such a step; besides, it might precipitate some sort of catastrophe by driving Charles to desperation.
— from A Changed Man, and Other Tales by Thomas Hardy

Prior to admitting us to the building, I made pictures of a sack, very long narrow sack type of affair that was brought down from there, and a pop bottle and some pieces of chicken, and I also made a picture of the rifle which I believe it was Lieutenant Carl Day from the Dallas police crime lab brought that.
— from Warren Commission (13 of 26): Hearings Vol. XIII (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

But in doing this, I vowed you should no longer be bound when it should be in my power to release you.
— from Frederick the Great and His Court by L. (Luise) Mühlbach