One need do nothing but paint a picture and sell it.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

For stout Choiseul would discern in the Dubarry nothing but a wonderfully dizened Scarlet-woman; and go on his way as if she were not.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

“Such are your commands, sir,” cries Sophia, “and I dare not be guilty of disobedience.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

I did not believe you then, because I did not want to believe, I plunged for the last time into that sewer.…
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Kula is also associated in certain districts, to which the Trobriands do not belong, with the mortuary feasts, called so’i .
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

"The wretch deserves nothing better," answered the old woman, "than to be taken and put in a barrel stuck full of nails, and rolled down hill into the water."
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

But Venus the white goddess drew nigh, bearing her gifts through the clouds of heaven; and when she saw her [Pg 189]
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

We were rather crowded yesterday, though it does not become me to say so, as I and my boa were of the party, and it is not to be supposed but that a child of three years of age was fidgety.
— from The Letters of Jane Austen Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne by Jane Austen

This is the conclusion of our correspondence, which I did not begin, and terminate with satisfaction.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

Well, I agree with many of your censures, but——" "Other tenets which we hold are that to chatter, and to do nothing but chatter, concerning our differences is not worth the trouble, seeing that it is a pursuit which merely leads to pettiness and doctrinairism; that beyond question are our so-called leaders and censors not worth their salt, seeing that they engage in sheer futilities, and waste their breath on discussions on art and still life and Parliamentarism and legal points and the devil only knows what, when all the time it is the bread of subsistence alone that matters, and we are being stifled with gross superstition, and all our commercial enterprises are failing for want of honest directors, and the freedom of which the Government is for ever prating is destined never to become a reality, for the reason that, so long as the Russian peasant is allowed to go and drink himself to death in a dram-shop, he is ready to submit to any sort of despoilment."
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

As non-preferable as it was, the police did not badger one if he washed away his rotting layers of stinking skin in the polluted canals or the Chao Phraya River so long as he entered and exited with his underwear on.
— from Corpus of a Siam Mosquito by Steven David Justin Sills

We do not believe that any man or woman of moderate sensibility could read it aloud without breaking down.
— from Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson

Nearly all members of the figwort family have only four stamens, but the pentstemons have five; however, the fifth stamen does not bear a pollen-sac and is often bearded.
— from Texas Flowers in Natural Colors by Eula Whitehouse

The mothers weep over their children, Loved and unwelcome together, Who should have been dreamed, not born, Since there is no road for the Indian.
— from Along the Shore by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

For my part I do not believe that he was poisoned at all, but we will soon straighten things out.
— from From Whose Bourne by Robert Barr

“I can fancy though that it must be trying to do nothing but one play for many hundreds of nights.
— from Wayfaring Men: A Novel by Edna Lyall

“But he says also that all the people do not believe the stories.”
— from In the Shadow of the Hills by George C. (George Clifford) Shedd

More will follow, and I expect they will be so gay that you will rejoice to have even a postal tie with La Belle France, to which, if you are a real good American, you will come back when you die—if you do not before.
— from A Hilltop on the Marne Being Letters Written June 3-September 8, 1914 by Mildred Aldrich