And yet, though this document is obviously the most important which any one can sign in his whole life, they will have him do so at an age when neither they nor the law will for many a year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest obligation, no matter how righteously he may owe it, because they hold him too young to know what he is about, and do not consider it fair that he should commit himself to anything that may prejudice him in after years.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

Dear mamma measured a yard across, and her backside projected almost as much as my aunt’s.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

And you'll give me some more material about your adventures?' As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat of an engine.
— from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Monsieur Abbe, you are a great moralist.”
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Sir Charles constantly said of Darwin, what Palgrave said of Tennyson, that the first time he came to town, Adams should be asked to meet him, but neither of them ever came to town, or ever cared to meet a young American, and one could not go to them because they were known to dislike intrusion.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

Or were these things made, as you almost assert, by God for the sake of men?
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Does it mean a broader manhood, a larger aim, a nobler ambition, or does it cry, "More, more, more"? Are you an animal loaded with ingots, or a man filled with a purpose?
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

cheer up, my lads; I’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month.—Huzza!— 116 C H A P. XLII ——F IVE years with a bib under his chin; Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to Malachi; A year and a half in learning to write his own name; Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin; Four years at his probations and his negations —the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great Julius Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and Peter Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And Baldus himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that 117 every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,— If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it?
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

There I wandered about for many a year, and at last came back to the Punjab, where I lived mostly among the natives and picked up a living by the conjuring tricks that I had learned.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

"I am cross this [133] morning, and you are a nice boy to sing for me.
— from The Pleasant Street Partnership: A Neighborhood Story by Mary Finley Leonard

So I wiggled at her nostrils, and she made a yell and a jump, and was wide awake.
— from In the Pecos Country by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Here I am a fellow so utterly worthless that I have n't even been able to take decent care of myself alone, yet all at once the duty fronts me to double my responsibilities.
— from Gordon Craig, Soldier of Fortune by Randall Parrish

I merely just for the moment admired you as a sweet little craft, and that’s how I came to do it.
— from The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

‘I think that review of Froude’ [ British Critic for that month and year, as above] ‘the most to be regretted of anything which I have seen of our Oxford friends.
— from Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments by Louise Imogen Guiney

This house is like every human soul, and so, like me and you and all of us.
— from Donal Grant by George MacDonald

I am me and always me , as you are always yourself in the most different acts of your life.
— from Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Victor Cousin

Now, you later employed Mr. McKenzie as your attorney and you have since discharged him, haven't you?*
— from Warren Commission (05 of 26): Hearings Vol. V (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission