Hast thou not time and opportunity to exercise thyself, not to wrong thyself; to strive against all carnal pleasures and pains, and to aet the upper hand of them; to contemn honour and vainglory; and not only, not to be angry with them, whom towards thee thou doest find unsensible and unthankful; but also to have a care of them still, and of their welfare?
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

It struck me that if, instead of using that complicated harp, and vibrating a number of rods tuned to different pitches, and thus creating on the line of wire a resultant effect, we were at once to vibrate a piece of iron, to give to that piece of iron not the vibration of a musical tone, but to give it the resultant vibration of a vowel sound, we could have an undulatory current produced directly, not indirectly, which would correspond to the motion of the air in the production of a sound.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson

Another vast field of blue, ever living in my memory, was that of the Viper's Bugloss, which I viewed [Pg 274] with surprise and delight from the platform of a train, returning from the Columbian Exposition; when I asked a friendly brakeman what the flower was called, he answered "Vilets," as nearly all workingmen confidently name every blue flower; and he sprang from the train while the locomotive was swallowing water, and brought to me a great armful of blueness.
— from Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth by Alice Morse Earle

Here, then, my colleague's question should be examined, as I cannot say (as has been said by one of them) that I had no hand in fixing the salaries and pay of the officers of Government and members of Congress, having actually voted at New York for them as they now stand.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 1 (of 16) by United States. Congress