It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship myself as a sailor; when, though I might indeed have worked a little harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I should have learnt the duty and office of a fore-mast man, and in time might have qualified myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Our life is compassed round with necessity; yet is the meaning of life itself no other than freedom, than voluntary force.
— 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.

No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

This lack of the movement of life is never noticed in a good picture, on the other hand the figures are often felt to move.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

In plants under culture and placed under new conditions of life, sometimes the male organs and sometimes the female organs become more or less impotent; now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight a degree under nature, then, as pollen is already carried regularly from flower to flower, and as a more complete separation of the sexes of our plant would be advantageous on the principle of the division of labour, individuals with this tendency more and more increased, would be continually favoured or selected, until at last a complete separation of the sexes might be effected.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

“A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape.
— from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Along this week I saw some such procession, more or less in numbers, every day, as they were brought up by the boat.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Tribes of Malayan origin living in northern Luzón are said to have ceremonial cannibalism ( Official Handbook of Philippines , p. 158).
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

As Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with the back of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and performs other wonders, of which, in his own private normal condition, he is quite incapable; so you see, in the affairs of the world and under the magnetism of friendships, the modest man becomes bold, the shy confident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent and peaceful.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The marauders in the train of an army were more or less in number, according as the chief was more or less severe.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The great misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the object of the jealousy of his brothers, the victim of cabals, and the contempt of the powerful of the world—it is being judged by fools.
— from A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07 by Voltaire

It is hard for the uninitiated to understand that the grade, be it high, middle, or low, is not associated with promotion and advancement as in schools for normal children.
— from Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899 Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899 by Various

A drop more or less is nothing in the overflowing well.
— from The Man in Black: An Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Everybody belongs more or less in New York; nobody has to belong here altogether."
— from A Hazard of New Fortunes — Volume 3 by William Dean Howells

"A little idleness more or less is not of much account.
— from Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume II) by William Black

These are facts known to all who have looked into the matter, but there is no such thing as decent public opinion on the subject, and the author or speaker who dares to allude to them takes his means of living, if not his life, into his hands.
— from Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles by C. W. (Caleb Williams) Saleeby

"A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape.
— from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

“More or less is no good.
— from Fathers of Men by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung