But if the principle is true, we ought to act as if we believed it, and not to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black instead of white, or a commoner instead of a nobleman, shall decide the person's position through all life—shall interdict people from all the more elevated social positions, and from all, except a few, respectable occupations.
— from The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill

I like your face, Lady Jane: it's got none of the damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to Court in."
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly sharp- pointed peak, and a couple of men up there “facing” the proposed tunnel.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

today we divided the remnant of our store of merchandize among our party with a view that each should purchase therewith a parsel of roots and bread from the natives as his stores for the rocky mountains for there seems but little probability that we shall be enabled to make any dryed meat for that purpose and we cannot as yet form any just idea what resource the fish will furnish us.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Below Macon the world grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt,—that strange land of shadows, at which even slaves paled in the past, and whence come now only faint and half-intelligible murmurs to the world beyond.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

What sort of men are they when they are eating, sleeping, procreating, easing nature, and the like?
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

If these be compared with Mr. Wallace's book on Russia, it will be seen that social life in that empire still preserves many of the characteristics which distinguished it half a century ago—the period of the first publication of the latter cantos of this poem.
— from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

This will be printed with my father’s Life of Socrates, &c. &c. 148 guage, approaching rather towards malediction——only he did not do it with as much method as Ernulphus ——he was too impetuous; nor with Ernulphus ’s policy——for tho’ my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love——yet never concluded his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would say, that ever was let loose in the world.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

What we need is enough typists to transcribe every letter of every salesman promptly, even if part of them have to be idle half the day.
— from The Knack of Managing by Lewis K. Urquhart

Had John been entertaining smart people to tea, and showing his pictures, with the rest?
— from Fenwick's Career by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

Other men, exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great round boulders invaded the trail.
— from A Daughter of the Snows by Jack London

e seen pikes charged against me thicker than that corn; and I vow to God, I did all that man could do at the sacking of Antwerp, that I did by the Lord!”
— from Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper by Francisco de Quevedo

Godolphin would have sought other opportunities of conversing with Radclyffe, but events soon parted them.
— from Godolphin, Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Had Margaret adopted indiscriminately her uncle's philosophical, ethical, social, political, or even literary ideas, it would certainly have unfitted her for living in a society so complacent, optimistic, and conventional as that of most American communities.
— from Her Husband's Purse by Helen Reimensnyder Martin

To-day, the airplane has become a safe mount indeed, for not only is the finished machine tried out before it is put into use, but each separate part is subjected to the most exacting series of tests.
— from The Romance of Aircraft by Laurence Yard Smith