Mahbub had business at Quetta, and there Kim, as Mahbub admitted, earned his keep, and perhaps a little over, by spending four curious days as scullion in the house of a fat Commissariat sergeant, from whose office-box, in an auspicious moment, he removed a little vellum ledger which he copied out—it seemed to deal entirely with cattle and camel sales—by moonlight, lying behind an outhouse, all through one hot night.
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling

And you—Always talking about how much you know about motors, and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!”
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

After which she came back to Court, and commands the King as much as ever, and hath and doth what she will.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Not less so his thoughtful speech; full of knowledge and meditation and earnest feeling!
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

The clerks pondered for a long time, but at last they said that no one was sure of his life with the head-servant, for he could kill a man as easily as a midge, and that the bailiff ought to make him get into the well and clean it, and when he was down below, they would roll up one of the mill-stones which was lying there, and throw it on his head; and then he would never return to daylight.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

The customs of the Mantis in connection with its own kin are more atrocious even than those of the spiders, who bear an ill repute in this respect.
— from Social Life in the Insect World by Jean-Henri Fabre

Otherwise, I feel sure you will appreciate the fact that both Mr. Knox and myself are extremely tired, and have passed through a very trying ordeal.”
— from Bat Wing by Sax Rohmer

Shipments of all commodities to Communist China and North Korea are embargoed while shipments to the European Soviet bloc, Hong Kong, and Macao are either denied or restricted.
— from East-West Trade Trends Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 (the Battle Act); Fourth Report to Congress, Second Half of 1953 by United States. Foreign Operations Administration

And, lo! a knight and maid arrive, ere well The cavaliers are seated in the sell.
— from Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto

On the eleventh of September, general Lewis moved from his camp, in the vicinity of Lewisburg, and after a march of nineteen days, traversing a wilderness through the distance of one hundred and sixty-five-miles, he reached the mouth of the Kanawha, and made an encampment at that point.
— from Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians by Benjamin Drake

I should myself hesitate to promulgate such a markedly non-possumus and ignorabimus statement concerning the scope of physical science, even as narrowly and popularly understood; but it illuminates the position taken up by those savants who are commonly known as Materialists, and explains their expressed though non-personal hostility to other scientific men who seek to exceed the boundaries laid down, and investigate things beyond the immediate range of the senses.
— from Raymond; or, Life and Death With examples of the evidence for survival of memory and affection after death. by Lodge, Oliver, Sir

Fastings, prayings, mutilations, kneelings, and mortifications are either the results of, or result in, insanity.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held his [Pg 141] fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a subject people by divine right.
— from Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout A Story of the United States in the Times That Tried Men's Souls by Alfred Bishop Mason

Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and everybody'll go on thinking he's honest.
— from The Sisters-In-Law: A Novel of Our Time by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton