Anyhow, it's not a time for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish Lydgate to know that.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

She often took me out of my box at my own desire, to give me air and show me the country, but always held me fast by a leading-string.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift

It is also true that the physical form may easily change in the course of generations through the mode of life; and the weakness or delicacy, which was once a matter of opinion, may become a physical fact.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

She often took me out of my box, at my own desire, to give me air, and show me the country, but always held me fast by a leading-string.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

After their first birth we spoke of their nurture and education, and after their second birth, when they have lost their parents, we ought to take measures that the misfortune of orphanhood may be as little sad to them as possible.
— from Laws by Plato

"You've got a pretty little farm there—" "We can't wear farms on our feet," snapped Peace, moving off once more, but again he stopped them, for he was really in need of pickers in order to harvest his big crop of berries before they spoiled on the vines.
— from At the Little Brown House by Ruth Brown MacArthur

Could it be possible that among these he passed not only for a business man of ordinary morality, but as a hypocrite too?
— from The Scripture Club of Valley Rest; or, Sketches of Everybody's Neighbours by John Habberton

The percipient mind, in no one of its affections, can be said to be the mass of matter which it perceives, unless the separate existence, either of matter or of mind, be abandoned by us, the existence of which, Dr Reid would have been the last of philosophers to yield.
— from Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3) by Thomas Brown

They have been keeping me out of my bed all this time; would you believe it, for more than two hours the mayor and I have been busy attending to fresh requisitions.
— from The Downfall by Émile Zola

As unsentimental was the mind of the New York citizen who instructed his executors to have made out of his bones circular buttons of dimensions from one half an inch to one inch in diameter, to have the skin of his body tanned and made into pouches; and to have violin strings made out of such parts as might be suitable, adding: “I hereby give unto my beloved friend James Hayes the buttons, violin-strings and tanned skin made out of my body as aforesaid, the same to be by him distributed according to his discretion to my intimate friends.”
— from The Romance of Wills and Testaments by Edgar Vine Hall

It is the function of these classes not only to give expression to the thoughts which are working obscurely in the minds of other men, but also to detect those aspects and bearings of conduct which are not obvious to the general intelligence.
— from Progressive Morality: An Essay in Ethics by Thomas Fowler

Young Sampson can come and see me also; but I defy both of them to get me out of my bed and into my breeches and blue coat against my pleasure.
— from John Herring: A West of England Romance. Volume 2 (of 3) by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

To confess the mystery and miracle of our mortal bodies, and say with David, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made; such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me, I cannot attain unto it:” but to add the one only rational explanation of the mystery which, thank God, common sense has taught, though it may be often in confused and defective forms, to the vast majority of the human race in all times and all lands—that He who grasps the mystery and works the miracle is God; that “His eye page 53 p. 53 sees our substances yet being imperfect; and in His book are all our members written, which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them.”
— from Westminster Sermons with a Preface by Charles Kingsley