I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or coerced.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

take one at one's word, bargain by inch of candle.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

But in other cases he would not agree to the impulsive proposals of the Athenians, and he opposed them when, elated by their power and good fortune, they talked of recovering Egypt and attacking the seaboard of the Persian empire.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their senses, of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first Protestants were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus in the institution of the sacrament.
— 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

And, noble sir, you vigorously have trod In this hard path, unknown, un-understood By its own countrymen, ‘tis you appear Our full enjoyment which was our despair, Scattering his mists, cheering his cynic frowns (For radiant brightness now dark Rabelais crowns), Leaving your brave heroic cares, which must Make better mankind and embalm your dust, So undeceiving us, that now we see All wit in Gascon and in Cromarty, Besides that Rabelais is convey’d to us, And that our Scotland is not barbarous.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

But instead of calling her “madame” as they had done hitherto, her companions addressed her simply as “mademoiselle,” without exactly knowing why, but as if desirous of making her descend a step in the esteem she had won, and forcing her to realize her degraded position.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient dignity, if proceeding from the husband’s assent; they must usurp it either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has not the grace and authority they desire.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

'Silas Wegg,' said Venus, 'know that I took the liberty of taking Mr Boffin into our concern as a sleeping partner, at a very early period of our firm's existence.'
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

For a townsman may be born in one city and educated in a second, and married in a third, and work in a fourth.
— from The Days of Auld Lang Syne by Ian Maclaren

Now this tidings-teller did not deliver his relation of things in private, but in open court, the King and his Son, high lords, chief captains, and nobles, being all there present to hear.
— from Works of John Bunyan — Volume 03 by John Bunyan

In the evening she brought in one containing the nightgown and nightcap, and the stockings for the next morning; this basket was called pret de la nuit.
— from Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Complete Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen by Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette) Campan

Mr. Lowell had been invited, of course, by the church wardens, and a pew reserved for him, but when he reached the church with his party half his pew was occupied.
— from From Canal Boy to President; Or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

borrow money?'—a singular cry to general apprehension, but it of course implies that the credit of the borrower must be first-rate, or his security of the most satisfactory nature, and that it is not the principal who goes into the market, but only the principal's broker.
— from Old and New London, Volume I A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places by Walter Thornbury

"I should like to see what Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane do when they open the basket, and find puff balls instead of cream puffs," snickered the weasel as he went off, licking his chops, where the cornstarch pudding stuff was stuck on his whiskers.
— from Uncle Wiggily in the Woods by Howard Roger Garis

At one stated hour in the day, a tall, handsome, distinguished, middle-aged man, wearing for the occasion the uniform of a colonel in the Imperial Guard, a blood-stained, tarnished, battered, battle-worn uniform, be it observed, comes into the room.
— from The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo by Cyrus Townsend Brady

I had not overlooked the fact that you might be ignorant of Chinese; but we shall do for you exactly what we are doing in the case of Captain Foster of the battleship Chen-yuen , who is also an Englishman.
— from A Chinese Command: A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas by Harry Collingwood

*I was raised Omnist, and it stuck; I believe in one Creator and a wide assortment of secondary gods.
— from A Matter of Honor: A Terran Empire novel by Ann Wilson

“The Greek Beauty” is, of course, Helen of Troy, and the reference in the alternative heading is apparently to that fine passage in the third book of the “Iliad,” where Helen meets the Trojan chiefs at the Scæan Gate (see line 154, which speaks of “Helen at the Tower”).
— from Pomegranates from an English Garden A selection from the poems of Robert Browning by Robert Browning