I replied to the doctor as well as I could, and was successful in getting a respectful hearing before the British public, who are by nature and practice ardent lovers of fair play, especially in a conflict between the weak and the strong.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

“I know,” said Darnay, respectfully, “how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Likewise there rose Abbe Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,—so that wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse, "Where is Abbe Terray, that he might reduce us to two-thirds!"
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

"A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom's going to school.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

And at the time when she was making for Pherae, exulting in the breeze from Zeus, there appeared to them below the clouds the steep mountain of Ithaca, and Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus.
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod

Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

“Tobacco!” cried Pencroft, who evidently had never seen his favorite plant except in the bowl of his pipe.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

He was also the first person who divided discourse into four parts; entreaty, interrogation, answer, and injunction: though some writers make the parts seven; narration, interrogation, answer, injunction, promise, entreaty, and invocation; and these he called the foundations of discourse: but Alcidamas says that there are four divisions of discourse; affirmation, denial, interrogation, and invocation.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

It is rare in India to find persistent energy in any undertaking not patronized by Government.
— from India under Ripon: A Private Diary by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

"This garden, within the inclosure of the new wall, is a thousand foot long, and about four hundred in breadth; divided in its length into three long squares or parallellograms, the first of which divisions, next the building, hath four platts embroydered; in the midst of which are four fountaines, with statues of marble in their middle; and on the sides of those platts are the platts of flowers; and beyond them is a little terrass raised, for the more advantage of beholding those platts.
— from The Natural History of Wiltshire by John Aubrey

No; for possible existence is nothing more than intrinsic capacity to exist actually, and this is essential to all reality: it is the criterion whereby we distinguish real being [pg 132] from logical being; but real being, as such, is indifferent to universality or individuality; as far as the simple concept of real being is concerned the latter may be either universal or individual; the concept abstracts equally from either condition of being.
— from Ontology, or the Theory of Being by P. (Peter) Coffey

But no fixed point existed in the thermometers employed 283 in France, every one graduating them according to his fancy; so that no two thermometers could be compared together.
— from The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2) by Thomas Thomson

If a sister thinks another sister’s conduct is not just what it ought to be she tells her so, without considering that she has no more business to take her to task than she has to call on and scold her next-door neighbour; they frankly discuss the manner in which the respective children are brought up, and, indeed, often make themselves so interfering and disagreeable that the family party ends in tears and in mutual vows against any attempt at the same thing again.
— from Nooks and Corners being the companion volume to 'From Kitchen to Garret' by J. E. (Jane Ellen) Panton

At this time a mark was adopted on some of the ware, “Coalport Improved Felspar Porcelain,” enclosed in a wreath of laurel.
— from Chats on English China by Arthur Hayden

Fibres it is closely embraced, and mixed with specific fermentaceous Juices, separated by it’s inner Coat, and impregnated by the Saliva, then by a convenient Heat there is made a mixture of all; for that the fermentaceous Particles entering into the Pores of the Meat, do pass thro’ agitate and eliquate it’s Particles, dissolving the whole Compages , in which the purer parts were intimately united with the Crass, and making them more fluid, so that they make another form of Mixture, and unite among themselves into the resemblance of a milky Cream, after which together with the thicker Mass with which they are yet involved, by the Constriction of the Stomach they pass down to the Guts, where by the Mixture of the Bile and Pancreatic Juice they are by another manner of Fermentation quite separated from the thicker Mass, and so are received by the Lacteal Vessels, as the thicker is ejected by Stool.
— from A Collection of Chirurgical Tracts by William Beckett