I can live in the tiny house for little or nothing, with one servant.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The Fourth Law Of Nature, Gratitude As Justice dependeth on Antecedent Covenant; so does Gratitude depend on Antecedent Grace; that is to say, Antecedent Free-gift: and is the fourth Law of Nature; which may be conceived in this Forme, "That a man which receiveth Benefit from another of meer Grace, Endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will."
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

It is composed of stanzas of four lines of no set number of syllables [ 505 ] and which may have one or two syllables more than the song allows, but at least two of which must be rhymed.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Even supposing the reader should peruse these two compositions without any interval, he would feel little or no difficulty in the change of passions: Why, but because he considers these performances as entirely different, and by this break in the ideas, breaks the progress of the affections, and hinders the one from influencing or contradicting the other?
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

After Plautus’s time, nec for nōn occurs in a few set combinations, such as nec opīnāns , not expecting , and, from Livy on, necdum , not yet , i.e. nōndum .
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

For the Rational Egoist—a man who had learnt from Hobbes that Self-preservation is the first law of Nature and Self-interest the only rational basis of social morality—and in fact, its actual basis, so far as it is effective—such a thinker might accept the Kantian principle and remain an Egoist.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

We have already shewn, that men invented the three fundamental laws of nature, when they observed the necessity of society to their mutual subsistance, and found, that it was impossible to maintain any correspondence together, without some restraint on their natural appetites.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

He therefore that is partiall in judgment, doth what in him lies, to deterre men from the use of Judges, and Arbitrators; and consequently, (against the fundamentall Lawe of Nature) is the cause of Warre.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

I find on consideration it would be too long; for so good a pamphlet ought to be discussed at full length or not at all.
— from More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters by Charles Darwin

Though he died from lack of nourishment and exhaustion under a bush by the wayside, his emaciated body would still be worth twenty thousand francs.
— from The Honor of the Name by Emile Gaboriau

The former lover of Nicholas blushed before the future mistress of Louis XV.
— from Memoirs of the Comtesse Du Barry With Minute Details of Her Entire Career as Favorite of Louis XV by Lamothe-Langon, Etienne-Léon, baron de

S. Nicolò (formerly S. Doimo) was founded in 1064 by Giovanni Orsini for ladies of noble descent, but little remains to show its age.
— from The Shores of the Adriatic The Austrian Side, The Küstenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia by F. Hamilton (Frederick Hamilton) Jackson

All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of Nature.
— from Dickens As an Educator by James L. (James Laughlin) Hughes

But some men now, either for love of novelty, or to display their ingenuity, assert that the earth moves. . . .
— from The Age of the Reformation by Preserved Smith

Let it not be supposed, however, that Swedenborgianism is perishing for lack of new blood.
— from The Religious Life of London by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie

Then he met the Night walking again, and they walked together until they met the Day; and the man saw below him in the flat lands of Nebraska the jumbled mud village of the Poncas.
— from The Lonesome Trail by John G. Neihardt