Actuated by such views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral teaching which very many eminent men of different religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain reason that it could not be done without such manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested against.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

But my love for your niece is of so animated and lastin' a natur', that I scarce know what I did say.”
— from Jack Tier; Or, The Florida Reef by James Fenimore Cooper

On March 9, 1886, I was deposited in a private hospital in Melbourne, fully aware of the fact that my case was considered serious enough to make it as likely as not that I should die there.
— from Thirty Years in Australia by Ada Cambridge

She did wish to go to the ball, but she knew that it was as likely as not that if she displayed any such desire he would prevent it.
— from The First Violin A Novel by Jessie Fothergill

You see that if you don't give me her name my ungovernable curiosity will set me to working the matter out for myself, and it is quite as likely as not that I shall go to the House of Martha, and ask questions, and pry, and watch, and make no end of trouble.
— from The House of Martha by Frank Richard Stockton

Mr. Traherne lit a cigarette and looked at Nance through its smoke with a grotesque scowl of infinite reassurance.
— from Rodmoor: A Romance by John Cowper Powys

Yes, there he would sprawl, whenever I saw them together, either in their own flat or at our house (more luxuriously at Northlands than in St. John's Wood, owing to the greater prevalence of upholstered furniture), cigarette between delicate fingers, paradox on his tongue and a Christopher Sly beatitude on his face, while Doria, chin on palm, and her great eyes set on him, drank in all the wonder of this miraculous being.
— from Jaffery by William John Locke

The self-constituted engineer, dazzled with the beauty of some, perhaps, really original contrivance, assumes his new profession with as little suspicion that previous instruction, that thought and painful labour, are necessary to its successful exercise, as does the statesman or the senator.
— from On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures by Charles Babbage