If you’re persuaded that it’s time for luck to turn, as it certainly is, and find that you haven’t means enough to try it (and that’s where it is, for you know, yourself, that you never have the funds to keep on long enough at a sitting), help yourself to what seems put in your way on purpose.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

It involves massive, intricate and sophisticated operations of export and import, knowledge of languages, extensive and frequent trips, an intimate acquaintance with world prices, the international financial system, demand and supply in various markets, frequent business negotiations with foreigners and so on.
— from After the Rain : how the West lost the East by Samuel Vaknin

Does not every one know how Nicomedes, king of Lycia, expended almost all the wealth of his people owing to his passion for a Venus by the hand of Praxiteles?
— from The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) by Giorgio Vasari

An incurable reluctance to make food for cannon and impose further burdens on selves already weighted to the ground by taxes, developed in the peoples of each Central and Western land; and in the years from 1920 to 1930 the downward curve was so alarming in Great Britain that if the Patriotic Party could only have kept office long enough at a time they would, no doubt, have enforced conception at the point of the bayonet.
— from Another Sheaf by John Galsworthy

We halted at Zagázig, remarking that this young focus of railway traffic has become the eastern key of Lower Egypt, as Benhá is to the western delta; and prophesying that some day, not far distant, will see the glories of Bubastis revived.
— from The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only kind of love, except a mother's, which has much permanence—love based on mutual admiration.
— from The Freelands by John Galsworthy

The ordinary world did not exist in this kingdom of luxury, ease and wealth.
— from The Drunkard by Guy Thorne

"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten to, like you will.
— from Mothers to Men by Zona Gale

The first requisites for the accomplishment of such a design as the suppression of the monasteries were an intimate knowledge of law, especially as related to lands and property, and a far-seeing, harsh, and rather unscrupulous nature.
— from Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Vol. 1 of 2 Life, Letters to 1535 by Roger Bigelow Merriman

"I remember well that the water was in a mallee flat, just scrubby country like this, but there was no kind o' landmark except a fair-sized lime tree which grew beside it, an' I canna see any lime trees about here."
— from The Lost Explorers: A Story of the Trackless Desert by Alexander MacDonald

Three times have you earned special credit; upon the first occasion, the grand master—no mean judge of conduct and character—deemed you worthy of secular knighthood, an honour which has not, in my memory, been bestowed at Rhodes upon any young knight; on the second, you were promoted to the command of a galley, though never before has such a command been given to any, save knights of long experience; and now, for the third time, the councillors of one of the greatest of Italian cities are about to do you honour.
— from A Knight of the White Cross: A Tale of the Siege of Rhodes by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty