It originally contained forty-five stones, and there are now only forty-one.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

The only object, of course, is the loaves and fishes; and instead of caucusing, paragraphing, libelling, feasting, promising, and lying, as with us, they take muskets and bayonets, and seizing upon the presidio and custom-house, divide the spoils, and declare a new dynasty.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

All people, young or old (that is, all people in those ante-reform times), would have thought her an interesting object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary images of young love: the illusions of Chloe about Strephon have been sufficiently consecrated in poetry, as the pathetic loveliness of all spontaneous trust ought to be.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa—a fixture extending entirely across the cabin—where they clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

We next come to the island of Caryanda 4235 , with a city of that name, and that of Pidosus 4236 , not far from Halicarnassus.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

(1)'Well, if the ancient Greeks ever wrote anything like this, let those who know decide it: for me, if I dare say so, I never read any invective of Cato's so fine as your encomtum.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

II Next in order would seem to come a dissertation on Magnificence, this being thought to be, like liberality, a virtue having for its object-matter Wealth; but it does not, like that, extend to all transactions in respect of Wealth, but only applies to such as are expensive, and in these circumstances it exceeds liberality in respect of magnitude, because it is (what the very name in Greek hints at) fitting expense on a large scale: this term is of course relative: I mean, the expenditure of equipping and commanding a trireme is not the same as that of giving a public spectacle: “fitting” of course also is relative to the individual, and the matter wherein and upon which he has to spend.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Instead of chairs we used stools which the students constructed by nailing together three pieces of rough board.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

That a congregation of individuals belonging to one species into one community may be profitable to the species is evident; it may obviously in several ways aid in maintaining the existence of the species, for instance, by facilitating abundant and certain fertilization (especially in anemophilous plants) and maturation of seeds; in addition, the social mode of existence may confer other less-known advantages.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

The discrepancy is, of course, partly explained by the faults of Johnson's style; but the explanation only removes the difficulty a degree further.
— from Hours in a Library, Volume 2 New Edition, with Additions by Leslie Stephen

Young novices, adults, and bands, are in one common predicament, as to partaking, more or less, of a certain two-fold error—that of producing a disproportionate acceleration of time in a quick and loud passage, and a disproportionate delay in a slow and piano movement.
— from The Violin Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc. by George Dubourg

At length, however, a Don Quixote appeared, and every mask in the room was eager to point out to him the imprisonment of Cecilia.
— from Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 1 by Fanny Burney

That's more than is in our commission.
— from The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 2 (of 3) by Christopher Marlowe

It is, perhaps, true that it may be done in the latter manner at less actual cost to the ratepayers, but all public work should be done in the best manner possible, irrespective of cost, thoroughly, but without extravagance, and the result of such work, especially where it affects the cleanliness and the appearance of a town, soon fully repays any moderate extra cost that may thus have been incurred, irrespective of the enormous benefit that is conferred upon any community by the reduction of disease and the death-rate by a proper attention to such necessary sanitary work.
— from The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook by H. Percy (Henry Percy) Boulnois

I lie now, instead of composing.
— from A Word, Only a Word — Complete by Georg Ebers

Then it was shown that instinct exists prior to all experience or memory; that it comes to an instant or speedy perfection, and is not capable of any improvement or cultivation; that its objects are precise and limited; that within its proper sphere it often appears as the highest wisdom, but beyond this is only foolishness; that it uses complex and laborious means to provide for the future, without any prescience of it; that it performs important and rational operations which the animal neither intends nor knows anything about; that it is permanent for each species, and is transmitted as an hereditary gift of Nature; and that the few variations in its action result from the development of provisional faculties, or from blind imitation.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

[59] Brick steining is executed either in bricks laid dry or in cement, in ordinary clay 9-inch work being used for large wells, and half-brick, or 4 1 ⁄ 2 -inch work, for small wells.
— from Water Supply: the Present Practice of Sinking and Boring Wells With Geological Considerations and Examples of Wells Executed by Ernest Spon

And, as it is our cautious custom to lag behind the rest of the world to see how their experiments in reform turn out before venturing ourselves, and then take advantage of their experience to get ahead of them, we should recognize that the ancient system of specifying grounds for divorce, such as adultery, cruelty, drunkenness, felony, insanity, vagrancy, neglect to provide for wife and children, desertion, public defamation, violent temper, religious heterodoxy, contagious disease, outrages, indignities, personal abuse, "mental anguish," conduct rendering life burdensome and so forth (all these are examples from some code actually in force at present), is a mistake, because the only effect of compelling people to plead and prove misconduct is that cases are manufactured and clean linen purposely smirched and washed in public, to the great distress and disgrace of innocent children and relatives, whilst the grounds have at the same time to be made so general that any sort of human conduct may be brought within them by a little special pleading and a little mental reservation on the part of witnesses examined on oath.
— from Getting Married by Bernard Shaw