I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Ignorant, as were the Burmese, of our mode of receiving money, by orders on Bengal, this circumstance, to their suspicious minds, was a sufficient evidence, that the missionaries were in the pay of the English, and very probably spies.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

To my own relief, my examination was not a long one.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

HYPOTRIMA, MEANING IN LATIN A PERFECT MESS OF POTAGE, REQUIRES THIS]: PEPPER, LOVAGE, DRY MINT, [57] PIGNOLIA NUTS, RAISINS, DATE WINE, SWEET CHEESE, HONEY, VINEGAR, BROTH, WINE, OIL, MUST OR REDUCED MUST [2] [1] List.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

[593] In The Making of Religion , Mr. Lang has expanded this anthropological argument so as to make it even more fully embrace psychical research.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

Lady Bertram constantly declined it; but her placid manner of refusal made Mrs. Rushworth still think she wished to come, till Mrs. Norris's more numerous words and louder tone convinced her of the truth.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

It is under Capricorn, and therefore under both Saturn and Mars, one rids melancholy by sympathy, the other by antipathy.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

If, after thou hast heard it, thou see any means of restoring me to my pristine estate, prithee use it; but, if thou see none, I beseech thee never tell any that thou hast seen me or heard aught of me.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs—besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing—may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.—
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Mr. Street’s contract was a vast work, every way one looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words “eight hundred miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts” mean, one must go over the ground in person—pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary reality to the reader.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no. ARMADO.
— from Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare

Other good men may exist, who, from motives of innocent mistake, or of mere inadvertency, may fail to exhibit that animated regard to his exemplary character, which assuredly it has merited from all men, and which the Ministers of Religion may most properly display.
— from The Eulogies of Howard: A Vision by William Hayley

The Rough is not usually a professional thief, though he will steal if he has a chance, and often does steal in order to procure the means of raising money.
— from Lights and Shadows of New York Life or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City by James Dabney McCabe

But, as he approached them, a measure of recollection must have returned to the man of science, for he looked hurriedly at his watch and began to stammer: "Colonel, I am greatly to be excused!
— from Sunlight Patch by Credo Fitch Harris

The table, or board, is thus adapted for the determination of that mode of raising money, popular among costermongers and other street-folk, who in their very charities crave some excitement; I mean a “raffle;” or it may be used for play, by one or more persons, the highest number “spun” determining the winner.
— from London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 1 of 4) by Henry Mayhew

On the subject of the difference between these two families, we find the learned Roderic O’Flaherty thus criticising Peter Walsh towards the close of the seventeenth century:— “An O’ or a Mac is prefixed in Irish surnames to the proper names of some of their ancestors, intimating that they were the sons, grandsons, or posterity of the person whose name they adopted; but it was not proper to use one name promiscuously in the place of another, as he writes O’Murphy, king of Leinster, instead of Mac Murphy, or rather Mac Murchadh; but the family of O’Murchadha, which in English is Murphy, is very different from and inferior to this family.”—Ogygia, Part III, cap.
— from The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 51, June 19, 1841 by Various

In its ringing periods, its plangent antitheses and æsthetic epigrams, it preluded and vindicated the excesses of whatsoever manifestations of romanticism mankind and the arts have since been called upon to consider and endure: from the humours of Petrus Borel to the experiments of Claude Monet and the ‘discoveries’ of Richard Wagner.
— from Views and Reviews: Essays in appreciation: Literature by William Ernest Henley

The following opening of a speech by Abraham Lincoln at Columbus, Ohio, shows how he used this device to gain the sympathy of the audience:— Fellow-citizens of the State of Ohio: I cannot fail to remember that I appear for the first time before an audience in this now great State,— an audience that is accustomed to hear such speakers as Corwin, and Chase, and Wade, and many other renowned men; and remembering this, I feel that it will be well for you, as for me, that you should not raise your expectations to that standard to which you would have been justified in raising them had one of these distinguished men appeared before you.
— from Practical Argumentation by George K. (George Kynett) Pattee

Though, indeed, considering the salaries paid by parents to masters of grammar-schools, that they are near half of what they pay their grooms, and that they are at least a full fourth, if not a third, of what they pay to the dancing master or fencing master, the music or riding master, the teacher of French or Italian, it must be allowed that they have a just right to expect that those two supernumerary studies should be thrown into the bargain.
— from A Discourse Being Introductory to his Course of Lectures on Elocution and the English Language (1759) by Thomas Sheridan