For the mode of life [of the Ethiopians] is wretched; they are for the most part naked, and wander from place to place with their flocks.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

Up pretty betimes, and awhile to my vyall, and then abroad to several places, to buy things for the furnishing my house and my wife’s closet, and then met my uncle Thomas, by appointment, and he and I to the Prerogative Office in Paternoster Row, and there searched and found my uncle Day’s will, end read it over and advised upon it, and his wife’s after him, and though my aunt Perkins testimony is very good, yet I fear the estate being great, and the rest that are able to inform us in the matter are all possessed of more or less of the estate, it will be hard for us ever to do anything, nor will I adventure anything till I see what part will be given to us by my uncle Thomas of all that is gained.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the bishoprics, and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured the right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay patrons.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The First Customer MISS HEPZIBAH PYNCHEON sat in the oaken elbow-chair, with her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced, when the image of hope itself seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

For the men of learning of those epochs, God, devil, angels, demons, hid the whole of Nature; no investigation was carried out to the end, no matter sifted to the bottom; everything that was beyond the most obvious causal nexus was immediately attributed to these; so that, as Pomponatius expressed himself at the time, Certe philosophi nihil verisimile habent ad haec, quare necesse est, ad Deum, ad angelos et daemones recurrere.
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

One may believe much or little of the extravagant stories handed down by tradition concerning these ancient Scandinavians, but certainly we have tangible evidence in these tombs that some of the legends are literally true.
— from Due North; or, Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia by Maturin Murray Ballou

What should you know, poor clerical creature, of the mystery of love of the eternal man and the eternal woman, of the self-effectuation of a soul?"
— from The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

It will be at once understood that my theory of the chief difference between [87] roasted or grilled meat and boiled meat applies to fried fish; that the flavouring juices are retained when the fish is fried, while more or less of them escape into the water when boiled.
— from The Chemistry of Cookery by W. Mattieu (William Mattieu) Williams

Sir Walter has never projected an imaginary Roderick Dhu or a King errant into any of the majesty or loveliness of those empty lakes and mountains.
— from The Spell of Scotland by Keith Clark

I have scarcely, I see, on referring to what I have written, sufficiently insisted on Turner's rendering of the rainy fringe , whether in distances, admitting or concealing more or less of the extended plain, as in the Waterloo, and Richmond (with the girl and dog in the foreground,) or as in the Dunstaffnage, Glencoe, St. Michael's Mount, and Slave Ship, not reaching the earth, but suspended in waving and twisted lines from the darkness of the zenith.
— from Modern Painters, Volume 1 (of 5) by John Ruskin

Syracuse in future, whilst my operations lie on the eastern side of Sicily, is my port, where every refreshment may be had for a fleet."
— from The Life of Nelson, Volume 1 The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

Being left as the most obvious leaders of the European and American Sections respectively (neither of them were in England when she died), the E. S. Council decided that they should carry on the Esoteric School as joint Outer Heads in place of H. P. B., oblivious of the fact that one of them (Mrs. Besant) was untrained, and both were unfit to fill such a high occult office ( see post p. 86 ).
— from H. P. Blavatsky; A Great Betrayal by Alice Leighton Cleather

On this view of the import of the term republic , instead of saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or nothing," we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

In Germany the dominant class is composed in part of an aristocracy by birth and of bourgeois capitalists, more or less of them ennobled.
— from New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 April-September, 1915 by Various

It was so that I looked this afternoon on those who came across the lawn in the pleasant five o'clock sun, and I looked with a difference from my manner of looking on that evening of my visit to the village, when I first saw these, my neighbours.
— from Friendship Village Love Stories by Zona Gale