This is the pervading note in many amateur ethnographic accounts of sailing, where cheap fun is made by speaking of roughly hewn dug-outs in terms of “dreadnoughts” or “Royal Yachts,” just as simple, savage chiefs are referred to as “Kings” in a jocular vein.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

However, as to the desire of recovering your liberty, it is unseasonable to indulge it so late; whereas you ought to have labored earnestly in old time that you might never have lost it; for the first experience of slavery was hard to be endured, and the struggle that you might never have been subject to it would have been just; but that slave who hath been once brought into subjection, and then runs away, is rather a refractory slave than a lover of liberty; for it was then the proper time for doing all that was possible, that you might never have admitted the Romans [into your city], when Pompey came first into the country.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

We are very desirous of receiving your account of the house, for your observations will have a motive which can leave nothing to conjecture and suffer nothing from want of memory.
— from The Letters of Jane Austen Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne by Jane Austen

If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts and differences of rank, ye will also abolish, strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling of individuality.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For one thing they were too dark, or rather yellow.
— from She by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

Meanwhile, although the hackney-coachman drove on rapidly, yet the party within seemed to consider it was a long distance from Dublin; and what was Miss Kiljoy’s astonishment, on looking out of the window at length, to see around her a lonely heath, with no signs of buildings or city.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

And now were any one placed on that tower, from whence Jove is fancied by the poets to survey the world, he would all around discern how many grievances and calamities our whole life is on every side encompassed with: how unclean our birth, how troublesome our tendance in the cradle, how liable our childhood is to a thousand misfortunes, how toilsome and full of drudgery our riper years, how heavy and uncomfortable our old age, and lastly, how unwelcome the unavoidableness of death.
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

The one seemed to be deprived of reason, yet he was meditating.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

“Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!”
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

Until the discoveries of recent years, it was made to consist entirely in the cult of one particular totem, and it was defined as the religion of the clan.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

"I have brought with me, your Excellency," said the Commandant, addressing Ali Khan, with much solemnity, "two English gentlemen who are desirous of renewing your acquaintance.
— from The Treasure of the Tigris: A Tale of Mesopotamia by A. F. (Augustus Ferryman) Mockler-Ferryman

Of course, there is a good deal of room yet for improvement, and there are still some things that you are rather timid of, but when I remember how you looked the first minute I saw you, and then to see the sociable way you sit up and talk to me now, you
— from The Arkansaw Bear: A Tale of Fanciful Adventure by Albert Bigelow Paine

There is one vestige in connection with trousers that we may mention before leaving this subject, and that is the stripes which are to be seen on many official dresses, and which have been adopted by some men in their evening dress of recent years.
— from The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of Clothes by Wilfred Mark Webb

He went through the painful ordeal of practical joking which awaited every young officer in those days, and came out of it, not without annoyance and an occasional display of resentment, yet in a way which conciliated his brother officers; and few men were more liked in the regiment than Roger Tichborne, affectionately nicknamed among them "Teesh."
— from Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton by Anonymous

While I rendered full justice to the good intentions of the Duke of Ragusa, yet I did not think that his advice could be adopted.
— from Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Volume 13 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

* No discovery of recent years has created more widespread interest than that of the radio-active elements.
— from History of Chemistry, Volume 2 (of 2) From 1850 to 1910 by T. E. (Thomas Edward) Thorpe

Recall, if you can, just what you did or read yesterday.”
— from The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katharine Green

Belonging to a race which for long generations has been oppressed and despoiled of rights, you must be the vigilant and sensitive defenders of all who suffer in any way from wrong.
— from Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 18 (of 20) by Charles Sumner