Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what and collects about us nobody knows whence or how—we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to shovel it away—the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

For, although one of these discoveries might have been supposed to be a happy guess, taken together they seem to imply a great advance and almost maturity of natural knowledge.
— from Timaeus by Plato

But the world will always ask: May one not kill a cobra to protect a child, or one's self?"
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

I no longer lived in Great Dvoryansky Street, but in the suburb with my old nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old woman, who always foreboded some harm, was afraid of all dreams, and even in the bees and wasps that flew into her room saw omens of evil, and the fact that I had become a workman, to her thinking, boded nothing good.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

And now, Sir Ironside, if thou wilt amend thy life and hold of me, I will entreat thee as a friend, and make thee Knight of the Round Table; but thou mayst no more be a murderer of noble knights.”
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

Not certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

At the demise, recently, of the consort of the eldest grandson of the mansion of Ning Kuo, he, in consideration of the friendship which had formerly existed between the two grandfathers, by virtue of which they had been inseparable, both in adversity as well as in prosperity, treating each other as if they had not been of different surnames, was consequently induced to pay no regard to princely dignity or to his importance, but having like the others paid, on the previous day, his condolences and presented sacrificial offerings, he had further now raised a shed wherein to offer libations.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

A generous heart, would have me stay, Service in his great court to take, And my own Norway king forsake.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

Soon after the marriage of Nakhodah Kasim with the white Semang, 7 an unprecedented flood occurred and quantities of foam came down the river.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

My old nurse kept me informed.
— from Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch

One quaint little book he opened had for its title—"Ye Whole Art of Love, Setting Forth ye Noble Manner of Noble Knights who woulde serve their Ladies Faithfullie in Death as in Lyfe"—this bore the date of 1590.
— from Innocent : her fancy and his fact by Marie Corelli

“Then, again, how can any man, medical or not, know what agonies of shame and outraged modesty women can and do undergo, when submitting to male medical and surgical treatment?
— from Medical Women: Two Essays by Sophia Jex-Blake

Unless one is a London-born man one never knows and never in his heart loves London.
— from The Tickencote Treasure by William Le Queux

Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 4.3% (FY02) Transnational Issues China Disputes - international: involved in complex dispute over the Spratly Islands with Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and possibly Brunei; claimants in November 2002 signed the "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea", a mechanism to ease tension but which fell short of a legally binding "code of conduct"; much of the rugged, militarized boundary with India is in dispute, but the two sides have participated in more than 13 rounds of joint working group sessions on this issue; India objects to Pakistan ceding lands to China in 1965 boundary agreement that India believes are part of disputed Kashmir; China, as well as Taiwan, claims Japanese-administered Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) islands; negotiations with Tajikistan resolved the longstanding boundary dispute; China and Kazakhstan have resolved their border dispute and are working to delimit their large open borders to control population migration, illegal activities, and trade; Kyrgyzstan's constitutional court rules that 1,270 sq km ceded to China in 2000 delimitation agreement were legally transferred; certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers are in uncontested dispute with North Korea and a section of boundary around Mount Paektu is indefinite - China objects to illegal migration of North Koreans into northern China; China continues to seek a mutually acceptable solution to the disputed alluvial islands with Russia at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers and a small island on the Argun river as part of the 2001 Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation; boundary agreements signed in 2002 with Tajikistan cedes 1,000 sq km of Pamir Mountain range to China in return for China's relinquishing claims to 28,000 sq km; demarcation of land boundary with Vietnam continues but maritime boundary and joint fishing zone agreement remains unratified; China occupies Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan Illicit drugs: major transshipment point for heroin produced in the Golden Triangle; growing domestic drug abuse problem; source country for chemical precursors and methamphetamine
— from The 2003 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

Her old mother Omitted no kind office, and she work'd Hard, and with hardest working barely
— from Poems, 1799 by Robert Southey

After supper, the king repaired to the garden, and a masque of noblemen, knights, and gentlemen passed before him.
— from Old Church Lore by William Andrews