"What you call a position in society is the privilege of capital and education.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

And so—guiltless very likely—she was writhing and pushing onward towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants were pointing at her as lost and ruined.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Captain enraged, threatens to put the Madman to death with his own hand—is diverted from that resolution by the arguments and persuasion of the first Lieutenant and Surgeon—we set sail for St. Helen's, join the fleet under the command of Sir C— O—gle, and proceed for the West Indies—are overtaken by a terrible tempest—my friend Jack Rattlin has his leg broke by a fall from the mainyard—the behaviour of Mr. Mackshane—Jack opposes the amputation of his limb, in which he is seconded by Morgan and me, we undertake the cure and perform it successfully The captain was carried into his cabin, so enraged with the treatment he had received, that he ordered the fellow to be brought before him, that he might have the pleasure of pistoling him with his own hand; and would certainly have satisfied his revenge in this manner, had not the first lieutenant remonstrated against it, by observing that, in all appearances, the fellow was not mad, but desperate; that he had been hired by some enemy of the captain's to him, and therefore ought to be kept in irons till he could be brought to a court-martial, which, no doubt, would sift the affair to the bottom (by which means important discoveries might be made), and then sentence the criminal to a death according to his demerits.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

And the Grand Master appoints the appellant to appear there by her champion, on pain of doom, as a person convicted of sorcery or seduction; and also the defendant so to appear, under the penalty of being held and adjudged recreant in case of default; and the noble Lord and most reverend Father aforesaid appointed the battle to be done in his own presence, and according to all that is commendable and profitable in such a case.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

For then honour, and custom, and civil laws supply the place of natural conscience, and produce, in some degree, the same effects.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed, and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

“Well, toward the end of September, a few days before returning to college, as I was playing about in the shrubbery of the park, among the branches and leaves, as I was crossing a path, I saw my father and mother, who were walking along.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

"I've thought of a couplet," interposed one of the party, "which you'll all have to criticise, and put into ship-shape; its burden is this: "The musk-like epidendrum smell enshrouds the court, where shines the sun with oblique beams; The iris fragrance is wafted over the isle illumined by the moon's clear rays."
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

It was useless; the boat crept, and presently it scarcely moved.
— from Dr. Breen's Practice by William Dean Howells

The young shoots may be either pickled or salted and eaten with rice, or candied and preserved in sugar; the seeds of some species are also eaten.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. Atrebates to Bedlis Vol. 1 Part 3 by Various

"You must never," Rousseau gravely warns us, "inflict punishment upon children as punishment; it should always fall upon them as a natural consequence of their ill-behaviour."
— from Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2) by John Morley

Each has its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its equal portion of intestines, or else its separate stomach; its equal portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord, and, perhaps, its separate pair of ganglia.
— from Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions by Herbert Spencer

Friendly and allied governments were informed of the visit and their cooperation and pertinent informational support was solicited.
— from Warren Commission (05 of 26): Hearings Vol. V (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

Words, and even usages in style, may be altered by custom, and proprieties in speech differ according to the several dialects of the country, and according to the different manner in which several languages do severally express themselves.
— from An Essay Upon Projects by Daniel Defoe

Numbers and their laws would, for example, be truths of reason, necessary, a priori, in analytical judgments and pure definitions; truths derived from experience would be truths of fact, contingent, a posteriori, in synthetic and individual judgments.
— from Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept by Benedetto Croce

"Well, I see Miss Page Allison has some imagination and if she ever has to choose a profession it should be novel writing."
— from At Boarding School with the Tucker Twins by Nell Speed

In these St. Lawrence hamlets, and throughout Lower Canada, a patois is spoken which is unintelligible to the Londoner or Parisian; and these villagers, the descendants of the French colonists, may be said to be a people destitute of a written language, and strangers to a literature.
— from Voyage of the Paper Canoe A Geographical Journey of 2500 Miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, During the Years 1874-5 by Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes) Bishop