I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public administration has not become, not only more centralized, but more inquisitive and more minute it everywhere interferes in private concerns more than it did; it regulates more undertakings, and undertakings of a lesser kind; and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above, and around all private persons, to assist, to advise, and to coerce them.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

We made a plan that Carl and Jaf should go back to the main land, to try if they could get some of the white men who had been cast on shore there, to come and live with us; so they got out the boat, and took with them two guns and food for eight days.
— from Robinson Crusoe — in Words of One Syllable by Lucy Aikin

It is not long since the Chinese Ambassador formally conveyed the thanks of his countrymen for the generous assistance forwarded from England during the late fearful famine in China.
— from Hodge and His Masters by Richard Jefferies

It was a test which would have knocked out a weak man, but Jim felt that he was getting a firmer foothold every day he trod the grimy pavement leading to his surgery.
— from Jim Mortimer by R. S. Warren (Robert Stanley Warren) Bell