"But if I had taken it they wouldn't have given a farthing for it, but would have laughed in my face for bringing such a trumpery thing.
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All the time of the lawsuit, as fast as I have mortgaged, Frog has purchased: from a plain tradesman, with a shop, warehouse, and a country hut with a dirty fish-pond at the end of it, he is now grown a very rich country gentleman, with a noble landed estate, noble palaces, manors, parks, gardens, and farms, finer than any we were ever master of.
— from The History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot

This desire is not confined to women; "I have endeavoured," says Lord Chesterfield, "to gain the hearts of twenty women, whose persons I would not have given a fig for."
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

He wrote a Periplus, and a work on Geography; a few fragments only of abridgements of these have survived.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

The number of crossbow men was thirty-three, and of musketeers thirteen: add to this our heavy guns and four falconets, a great quantity of powder and balls.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

For Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise; and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where we were born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie buried?
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

They are mostly goblin and fiendish faces, and look as if they were darting out of the church in a towering passion, or a fit of diabolic disgust and malice.
— from Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Actions, or Words that proceed from Errour, Ignorance, or Folly, Dishonourable. Gravity, as farre forth as it seems to proceed from a mind employed on some thing else, is Honourable; because employment is a signe of Power.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Go and fight for the remnant that shall be preserved.
— from The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

It implies, of course, that the Reform Bill did not give a full, fair, and free representation to the country, else there can be no excuse for altering its provisions.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851 by Various

By my troth, we can seldom point with certainty in these days to one of our fellow creatures, and say truly, I know him to be good and free from treason.
— from The Fifth of November A Romance of the Stuarts by Charles S. Bentley

On some occasions the records mention gersumarii , that is peasants who pay a gersuma , a fine for marrying their daughters [281] .
— from Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History by Paul Vinogradoff

Any girl of sense is bound [Pg 32] to think it much greater and finer for a man to read books than to ride horses.
— from Bonaventure: A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana by George Washington Cable

"He closed his eyes and ran a few steps away from it; and it was not till he began climbing up the Guffrisberg again, far from the shaft, and could look up at the bright, sunny sky, that he quite lost the feeling of terror which had taken possession of him.
— from The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann

The spot on which we were standing was a high, bare mountain rock, which, however, produces a sort of grass as food for the cattle, which are here a great source of gain.
— from Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Yes, the old man was taking his leave, when he wandered alone through garden and field, forest and meadow--leave of the friends and acquaintances of his youth: here a tree, under whose branches he had dreamed of the woman he loved; yonder a rock, against whose hard breast he had once pressed his tortured young heart; the meadow where he had broken the wild steed with which he had hoped to win the beautiful Ulrica von Dahlitz; the forest whose echoes he had so often waked by the report of his good rifle.
— from What the Swallow Sang: A Novel by Friedrich Spielhagen