Such slaughter, too, around his tent, The furious Ajax made, one night, Of sheep and goats, in easy fight; In anger blindly confident That by his well-directed blows Ulysses fell, or some of those By whose iniquity and lies That wily rival took the prize.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

[135] A third lane out of Tower street, on the north side, is called Mincheon lane, so called of tenements there sometime pertaining to the Minchuns or nuns of St. Helen’s in Bishopsgate street.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

I will then say, that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be by a more legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the necessity of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as that of my total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

“I've taken a notion into my old numbskull,” observed Silver.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

See the paragraph on genius in Emerson's lecture on The Method of Nature , one sentence of which runs: "Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator."
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
— from Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Illustrated by Arthur Conan Doyle

Mademoiselle had only disagreeable things to say of the symphony concerts, and insulting remarks to make of all the musicians of New Orleans, singly and collectively.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

All this is idle musing or at best poetry; yet our ordinary knowledge of what goes on in men's minds is made of no other stuff.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

“Lord, major,” returned the flattered woodsman, “I should be but a poor scholar for one who has studied so long in the wilderness, did I not know how to set forth the movements or natur' of such a beast.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

It is high time that such acts should be put a stop to, and that the mob of New Orleans should be taught to pay some regard to the usages of civilized nations.
— from The Civil War in America Fuller's Modern Age, August 1861 by Russell, William Howard, Sir

This talk of New-England wild-flowers, the mention of names once so familiar, was very pleasant to me.
— from Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal by Mary Lowell Putnam

The doctor’s father was Mayor of Norwich, ‘or some other town,’ and a lady came to him, bidding him arrest a tailor for murdering his wife.
— from Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Andrew Lang

When we read in the XIIIth book of the Annals (6), "imperatori" (Bracciolini's word for "General," Tacitus would have written "duci"), "quantum ad robur deesse, cum octavo decimo aetatis anno Cneius Pompeius, nono decimo Caesar OCTAVIANUS civilia bella sustinuerint, we may be assured that we are reading words which were not written by Tacitus, and, as for the matter of that, any Roman, because he would have known that Augustus Caesar, before he was called Augustus, did not bear and never could have borne, the name of Octavianus: the son of Octavius, he was himself Octavius, not Octavianus, as his sister was Octavia (so Pliny the Elder writes, "Marcellus Octavia " not Octaviana, "sorore Augusti genitus" N.H. XIX.
— from Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century by John Wilson Ross

The question between Mr. Spencer and me is merely one of language; for neither of us (if I understand Mr. Spencer's opinions rightly) believes an attribute to be a real thing, possessed of objective existence; we believe it to be a particular mode of naming our sensations, or our expectations of sensation, when looked at in their relation to an external object which excites them.
— from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive by John Stuart Mill

When the flower spikes are half developed, a little liquid manure, or nitrate of soda, or one of the prepared plant foods, dissolved in water, will be of great benefit applied about once a week.
— from Gardening Indoors and Under Glass A Practical Guide to the Planting, Care and Propagation of House Plants, and to the Construction and Management of Hotbed, Coldframe and Small Greenhouse by F. F. (Frederick Frye) Rockwell

For a considerable period of time they found themselves in a mesh or network of streams and lakes, through which Tom Farnum guided them steadily northeastward, with never a sign of doubt as to the course to take.
— from The Radio Boys Rescue the Lost Alaska Expedition by Gerald Breckenridge

I had already lost too much of my precious time on her account, she said; she felt much better, and now that she knew my orders, no one should induce her to do anything I had not sanctioned.
— from The Dead Lake, and Other Tales by Paul Heyse

But more often no one speaks.
— from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series by Lafcadio Hearn