For instance, I watched for some time a baby, between seven and eight weeks old, sucking some milk which was cold, and therefore displeasing to him; and a steady little frown was maintained all the time.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

In the course of the day the overseer sent him on an errand, which occupied so much time that it was not possible for him to perform the task.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

As you go along roads, or barrens, or across country, anywhere through these States, middle, eastern, western, or southern, you will see, certain seasons of the year, the thick woolly tufts of the cedar mottled with bunches of china-blue berries, about as big as fox-grapes.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Walking with arms encircling waists, or such demonstrative tokens of love, are marks of low breeding.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

I love every word of "Spring" and "Spring Has Come."
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

I forgot that it is not possible to stop at friendship with a pretty woman whom one sees constantly, and especially when one suspects her of being in love herself.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run into hyperbole.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

2 [A13; b6] be cautious, be extra wary of s.o.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Seed vessel, 3 carpels each with one seed.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. (Trinidad Hermenegildo) Pardo de Tavera

He was so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of so different a quality from Bertha's, though hers too was desperate enough.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Of chalke also we haue our excellent Asbestos or white lime, made in most places, wherewith being quenched we strike ouer our claie workes and stone wals, in cities, good townes, rich farmers and gentlemens houses: otherwise in steed of chalke (where it wanteth for it is so scant that in some places it is sold by the pound) they are compelled to burne a certeine kind of red stone, as in Wales, and else where other stones and shels of oisters and like fish found vpon the sea coast, which being conuerted into lime doth naturallie (as the other) abhorre and eschew water whereby it is dissolued, and neuerthelesse desire oile wherewith it is easilie mixed, as I haue seene by experience.
— from Holinshed Chronicles: England, Scotland, and Ireland. Volume 1, Complete by William Harrison

“Ye are now in the pit, whence there is no escape,” went on Sandy, “but, if ye are true knights, and no craven cowards ye will come to no harm.
— from Bart Keene's Hunting Days; or, The Darewell Chums in a Winter Camp by Allen Chapman

The advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our circle, had always been a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion; indeed, it was generally a signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, into unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to be extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with our secret runs and refuges.
— from The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame

A sensation is not an effect which one substance impresses upon another because God pleased that it should, or because of an incomprehensible incident in the original constitution of things.
— from Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition by John Dewey

They can guarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when our shells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found its way.
— from The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box by Arthur Mee

The earrings were only sham, for in reality they were fixed to her head-dress, and were only so arranged as to appear suspended from the ears.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, September, 1878 by Various

3201 Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that's their great affair.
— from The Ancient Regime by Hippolyte Taine

With that we departed from them, promising them to do our best: and in the end we obtained so much of the archbishop, that he went vnto the Viceroy to deliuer our petition, and perswaded him so well, that he was content to set them at libertie, and that their goods should be deliuered vnto them againe, vpon condition they should put in sureties for two thousand pardawes, not to depart the countrey before other order should be taken with them.
— from The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 10 Asia, Part III by Richard Hakluyt

Each works out something that another doesn't, and so can benefit the bunch all round.
— from The Thread of Flame by Basil King