This can be said of no other explanation, for all the others leave the passage obscure and more or less nonsensical.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries of life nor pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits, each with an unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of the soul.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Carrie did not exactly fancy the suggestion, but the novelty of the situation, the presence of strangers, all more or less nervous, and the desire to do anything rather than make a failure, made her timid.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

You are good and susceptible also: this I know and have seen; I am sorry I was not sooner convinced of it; but in the rank you hold, in the manner of living, nothing can make a lasting impression; a succession of new objects efface each other so that not one of them remains.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Yet the colossal undertaking had progressed but little beyond the sphere of projection, since, after a pen had been gnawed awhile, and a few strokes had been committed to paper, the whole would be laid aside in favour of the reading of some book; and that reading would continue also during luncheon and be followed by the lighting of a pipe, the playing of a solitary game of chess, and the doing of more or less nothing for the rest of the day.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

The huts in question were stoutly built and the intervening alleys well laid-out; while, wherever a waggon was visible, it looked serviceable and more or less new.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

There have always been persons more or less numerous who have had the same disorder.
— from Laws by Plato

Be not removed far from your means of livelihood, nor destroyed or injured!
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

To the office all the morning, and at noon dined with Sir W. Batten and Pen, who would needs have me drink two drafts of sack to-day to cure me of last night’s disease, which I thought strange
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Impetuous from the northern skies, Where Mount Kailása's summits rise, Ten hundred millions hasted, hued Like manes of lions, ne'er subdued: The dwellers on Himálaya's side, Whose food his roots and fruit supplied, With rangers of the Vindhyan chain
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

The Berrebber families are in like manner more or less numerous in the towns, according to the proximity of the latter to the Berrebber districts.
— from Travels of Richard and John Lander into the interior of Africa, for the discovery of the course and termination of the Niger From unpublished documents in the possession of the late Capt. John William Barber Fullerton ... with a prefatory analysis of the previous travels of Park, Denham, Clapperton, Adams, Lyon, Ritchie, &c. into the hitherto unexplored countries of Africa by Robert Huish

All the social animals, when left to themselves, form herds more or less numerous; and all the individuals of the same herd know each other, are mutually attached, and will not allow a strange individual to join them.
— from Principles of Geology or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology by Lyell, Charles, Sir

"My wife's brother—the one you're so fond of—slept in my 'ouse last night.
— from The Constable's Move Captains All, Book 4. by W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs

Mr. Gladstone used to say that, in his schooldays at Eton, a boy might learn much, or learn nothing; but he could not learn superficially.
— from Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography by George William Erskine Russell

[Pg 163] INDEX. A. "Administrative Reform" agitation, 129 All the Year Round , 114 , 115 America, Dickens' first visit to United States in 1842, 71 , 74 - 82 , 94 , 95 second visit in 1867-8, 152 - 153 "American Notes," 68 , 79 - 81 B. "Barnaby Rudge," 52 , 69 - 70 , 108 Barnard, Mr., his illustrations to Dickens' works, 143 "Battle of Life," 104 Bentley's Miscellany edited by Dickens, 49 , 51 "Bleak House," 116 - 119 Boulogne, 119 , 120 Bret Harte, Mr., on Little Nell, 64 Browne, or "Phiz," his illustrations to Dickens' works, 140 - 142 C. Carlyle, his description of Dickens quoted, 35 ; and of Dickens' reading, 124 ; his influence on Dickens, 126 , 127 ; see also 98 and 139 Chapman and Hall, 40 , 41 , 42 , 51 , 61 Chatham, 13 Childhood, Dickens' feeling for its pathos, 12 , 63 "Child's History of England," 115 "Chimes," 55 , 96 - 99 , 142 "Christmas Carol," 91 - 92 , 125 "Christopher North," 72 Cowden Clarke, Mrs., quoted, 110 Cruikshank, his illustrations to "Sketches" and "Oliver Twist," 140 - 142 D. Daily News , started with Dickens as editor, 99 , 100 , 103 , 114
— from Life of Charles Dickens by Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas), Sir

Ugly memories of last night's danger and humiliation crowded back into the brain no longer irradiated by Peter's presence.
— from Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

Now, in any country, where such degradation of females could be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been addicted to any mode of labor not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a prædial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to having incurred indignities of this horrible kind.
— from Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas De Quincey

"So we may say that the best way to fight fear is carefully to avoid inducing it in children, and to be on the watch, so as to be able to nip in the bud those fears which are more or less natural to children, and which appear of their own accord."
— from Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 by Various

Statesmen and men of letters, nobles and burghers, great Churchmen as well as monks and parish priests—all bewailed the condition of the organised Christian life, and most of them recognised that the unreformed Papacy was [Pg 485] the running sore of Europe.
— from A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2) by Thomas M. (Thomas Martin) Lindsay

2. The next faculty is the sensitive, diversified by the five perceptions of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, which are all more or less noble, the one than the other.
— from True Christianity A Treatise on Sincere Repentence, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc. by Johann Arndt