Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get his rider through intact, but he always got through himself.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

It is, methinks, a low and degrading Idea of that Sex, which was created to refine the Joys, and soften the Cares of Humanity, by the most agreeable Participation, to consider them meerly as Objects of Sight.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

'Tis only to us men she is cruel: You she will treat kindly; A snug little pond she'll find ye, Clearer than a crystal jewel, Where you may all live and do well; Or, if by chance some few Should find their fate Conceal'd in the bait, The happier still are you; For envied is the death that's met At the hands of sweet Annette.'
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

That an equality of goods was in some degree serviceable to strengthen the bands of society, seems to have been known to some of the ancients; for Solon made a law, as did some others also, to restrain persons from possessing as much land as they pleased.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

And the Townhall is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!—At the Cafe de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its kind: a woman engaged in public speaking.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Old myth and legend and dream took shape and substance.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

I saw within my head A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death, Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath, And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said: 4 "Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

Alexander built 70 cities in a short space for his part, our sultans and Turks demolish twice as many, and leave all desolate.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The enemy (about 1.30 p.m.) made a last and desperate effort to carry one of the redoubts, but was badly cut to pieces by the artillery and infantry fire from the other, when he began to draw off, leaving his dead and wounded on the ground.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

I won't annoy you by any impertinent curiosity, nor burden you with uninteresting confidences; I only want to feel that you like me a little and don't mind my liking you a great deal.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

I am sorry I used that expression, as it is commonly applied to such self-oblivion as Mrs. -; and light and darkness are not more opposite than the forgetfulness to which I alluded, and hers.
— from The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4 by Horace Walpole

It explains why some men look like animals; why some men act like a dog; why some are slow as a snail; why some are secretive as a clam; why some absorb all you have got, like a sponge; why some are as dirty as a hog; why some are as sly as a fox; why some are as scaly as a fish; and so on ad infinitum .
— from Letters of Peregrine Pickle by George P. (George Putnam) Upton

Such Chinese scholars as Martin and Legge and Douglass think that it is; others deny it.
— from Oriental Religions and Christianity A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891 by Frank F. (Frank Field) Ellinwood

Military affairs was the subject: we had both served in the Peninsula, and consequently talked of many mutual acquaintances, living and dead: this made us so far familiar, that he gave me an outline of his professional life.
— from The Military Sketch-Book, Vol. 2 of 2 Reminiscences of seventeen years in the service abroad and at home by William Maginn

"Our detachment might have made considerable havoc among the British, and, perhaps, if promptly supported, have maintained a long and doubtful battle.
— from The Old Bell of Independence; Or, Philadelphia in 1776 by Henry C. (Henry Clay) Watson

“The influence of this son of an unbeliever, who hath stolen our power, was the cause of our defeat when our brave sons attacked the homards on the Oasis of Meskam,” added Labakan, apparently determined that the Great Sheikh should forget none of the allegations against me.
— from Zoraida: A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara by William Le Queux

He did not answer; his hand moved a little and dropped.
— from The Nine-Tenths by James Oppenheim

2. To make a loud and disagreeable noise.
— from An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language in which the words are explained in their different senses, authorized by the names of the writers by whom they are used, or the titles of the works in which they occur, and deduced from their originals by John Jamieson

Mothers would have brought forth children without pain, and children themselves would have been brought up without any of that misery and labor and distress with which they are now always reared.
— from Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation by Martin Luther