I now spent my time in planning how I might get along through life after my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.
— from Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Volume 1 (of 2) by William Henry Herndon

This is easily done and may prevent much trouble.
— from Clothing and Health: An Elementary Textbook of Home Making by Anna M. (Anna Maria) Cooley

I now spent my time in planing how I might get along through life after my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete by Abraham Lincoln

They were my competitors and would have taken my business or combined against me gladly,” Obadiah’s eyes rested anxiously upon the face of his daughter as he concluded, “I was fighting Dalton, a more powerful man than myself, not widows and orphans.”
— from The Triumph of Virginia Dale by John Francis

All this was enough to dazzle a more prudent mind than that of Henry, and to inspire those sanguine dreams of inexhaustible affluence with which private men are so often filled by sudden prosperity.
— from Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 1 of 3 by Henry Hallam

He cannot, however, tell you what I can, and what will better please your good heart than the account of my trial, namely, that I am not so disconsolate as many persons may think I am.
— from The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl by Richard Cobbold

And we do all mean pretty much the same thing when all’s said.
— from Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage by Oliver Onions

Vix had been my heroine, and my only one; but Ruby was my hero, and I depended on him for my duty and my pleasure more than I knew.
— from Whip and Spur by George E. (George Edwin) Waring

Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and Montenegro," published more than thirty years ago, is an admirable book, and one to which I owe a very deep debt of gratitude.
— from Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice by Edward A. (Edward Augustus) Freeman

In his letter to Mrs. Browning he speaks of his efforts to “put off the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter!”
— from Threads of Grey and Gold by Myrtle Reed