The Earthen Pot said to the Brass Pot, “Pray keep at a distance and do not come near me, for if you touch me ever so slightly, I shall be broken in pieces, and besides, I by no means wish to come near you.”
— from Aesop's Fables Translated by George Fyler Townsend by Aesop

And how shall we, with greater ease and certainty, acquire this know {5} ledge than by the aid of physiognomy, understood in its most extensive sense, since, in so many of his actions, man is incomprehensible?
— from The Pocket Lavater; or, The Science of Physiognomy To which is added an inquiry into the analogy existing between brute and human physiognomy by Giambattista della Porta

I now propose to resume this subject on the most extensive scale, since I see that it has the most direct bearing upon the transmutation theory. .
— from Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence by Louis Agassiz

I am as much afraid of you as of the river; for if you do but touch me ever so slightly, I shall be sure to break.
— from Æsop's Fables: A Version for Young Readers by Aesop

How long this superstition lasted cannot accurately be settled; perhaps it is not quite extinct even yet; but we know how little the most earnest students succeeded in surprising the secrets of the universe by reading Greek treatises, and how much by studying the universe itself.
— from The Principles of Success in Literature by George Henry Lewes

At the sight of the beautiful shoulders and still more exquisite bosom rising from the rough, blackish-brown skin Periphas’ eyes dilated, and when Byssa’s movements, ere she succeeded in seizing the sandal, revealed more and more of her nude charms, the half-savage Pelasgian’s passionate heart kindled.
— from Pictures of Hellas: Five Tales of Ancient Greece by Peder Mariager

"I cannot manufacture evidence, sir," said Inglis stiffly.
— from The Solitary Farm by Fergus Hume

On 14th February, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans "says she is Strauss-sick—it makes her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of the Christ-image
— from George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3) by George Eliot

The helm to starboard moves; each shivering sail Is sharply trimmed, to clasp th' augmenting gale— The mizzen draws; she springs aloof once more, While the fore-staysail balances before.
— from The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West by W. H. Hamilton (William Henry Hamilton) Rogers