A universal favorite, thanks to money, manners, much talent, and the kindest heart that ever got its owner into scrapes by trying to get other people out of them, he stood in great danger of being spoilt, and probably would have been, like many another promising boy, if he had not possessed a talisman against evil in the memory of the kind old man who was bound up in his success, the motherly friend who watched over him as if he were her son, and last, but not least by any means, the knowledge that four innocent girls loved, admired, and believed in him with all their hearts.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

Bouquet blanc et le bouquet noir, Le, poisie en 4 chants.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

Loo,’ but never ‘Lee!’ until we are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but impossible.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

The slave-mother can be spared long enough from [41] the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother’s anguish, when it adds another name to a master’s ledger, but not long enough to receive the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her child.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

And, by true computation of the time, Found that the issue was not his begot; Which well appeared in his lineaments, Being nothing like the noble Duke my father.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

[3] Or it may be, at in de Cressy's version: May my living be no longer to Thy worship?
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

[28] In this same way, comparing the characteristic general features of "social" and "living bodies," noting likeness and differences, particularly with reference to complexity of structure, differentiation of function, division of labor, etc., Spencer gives a perfectly naturalistic account of the characteristic identities and differences between societies and animals, between sociological and biological organizations.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

“This is my limit, because nothing less will do.”
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

There were mountains and rivers to evade, stretches of water to bridge over, granite rocks to pierce, swampy land and thick forests to avoid, and last, but not least, the selection of a route that should be not only the best commercially, but also the best from the standpoint of picturesqueness.
— from Peeps at Many Lands: Newfoundland by Ford Fairford

Last, but not least, it cannot be otherwise than important to a teacher of metaphysics, to be able to say with universal assent, that what he expounds is Science, and that thereby genuine services will be rendered to the commonweal.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

In the past the High Street was intersected by roads described as "a street, half houses, half potatoes," "a street apparently doing a good stroke of business," "a street, but no houses," "a street indigent, but houseless," "a street which appears to have been nipped in the kitchens," "a street thickly populated with three inhabitants," and last but not least, "a street in such a flourishing condition that it has started a boarding-house and seminary."
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93. September 17, 1887 by Various

Old laws become new laws outdoors.
— from Voices from the Past by Paul Alexander Bartlett

The Kalamazoo and its mouth were soon far behind, and le Bourdon no longer felt the least apprehension of the savages left in it.
— from Oak Openings by James Fenimore Cooper

Numerous German makers, whose names will be found under the "German School," were also liege subjects of Amati, and copied him with much exactness; so also, last, but not least, our own countrymen, Forster, Banks, and Samuel Gilkes.
— from The Violin Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators by George Hart

When a town is sacked the army gets a considerable loot, but nothing like what the value was of the city as it flourished before the siege.
— from The Historic Thames by Hilaire Belloc

[xii] country gentleman, devoted to husbandry, and deep in platforms of hop gardens, [14] —a baronet, whose name for upwards of a century has been used as a synonyme for incurable political bigotry, [15] —a little, crooked, and now forgotten man, who died, as his biographer tells us, "distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a continual bibbing of strong and high tasted liquors," [16] —and last, but not least assuredly, of one who was by turns a fanatical preacher and an obscure practitioner of physic, and who passed his old age at Clitheroe in Lancashire in attempting to transmute metals and discover the philosopher's stone.
— from Discovery of Witches The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster by Potts, Thomas, active 1612-1618

Why should not my love be named Lucrezia?
— from Abbé Aubain and Mosaics by Prosper Mérimée