No man is so happy as never to give offence.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

Next morning I sent him a note, stating, that I might have been in the wrong, but it was not intentionally; he was therefore, I could not help thinking, too severe upon me.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

When you asked me, I certainly did say that the courageous are the confident; but I was never asked whether the confident are the courageous; if you had asked me, I should have answered 'Not all of them': and what I did answer you have not proved to be false, although you proceeded to show that those who have knowledge are more courageous than they were before they had knowledge, and more courageous than others who have no knowledge, and were then led on to think that courage is the same as wisdom.
— from Protagoras by Plato

The Covent Garden chorus includes, at rehearsal, a considerable number of well-dressed men in shining hats and new paletots, many of whom are good music-teachers, not the less qualified for that business by the opportunities they have in this establishment of becoming familiar with the way in which the best works of the best masters are executed by the best artists.
— from Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 by Various

I shrank from the knight from the first moment I saw him, and never could it be that I should be brought to look upon him with favor.
— from Albrecht by Arlo Bates

Fortunately, under this system no man is so high and none so humble in the scale of public station as to escape from the scrutiny or to be exempt from the responsibility which all official functions imply.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

Such a piece of mere imitation should have added nothing to the reputation of a painter of Holbein's powers; but the story was soon told all over Bâle, and orders were given to prevent the loss to the city of so great an artist.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 17, March, 1859 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

I liked the Meer Sahib from the moment I saw him, and now that he is properly dressed, by Alla!
— from Confessions of a Thug by Meadows Taylor

Although he followed Theocritus in his use of the several types of song and stamped them to all future ages in pastoral convention, though he may have begun with fairly close imitation of his model and only gradually diverged into a more independant style, he at no time showed himself content with the earlier poet's simplicity of motive.
— from Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England by W. W. (Walter Wilson) Greg

We don’t talk much in society here, and never about politics.”
— from The Empire Makers: A Romance of Adventure and War in South Africa by Hume Nesbit

I believe this unpleasant and preposterous affair is thought one of the fine things in the story; I do not mind owning that I thought it so myself when I was seventeen; and if I could have found a Beatrix to be in love with, and a Lady Castlewood to be in love with me, I should have asked nothing finer of fortune.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Literature Essays by William Dean Howells