Nothing is more unfair to others who are keen about whatever it is you are going to see, than to make them miss the beginning of a performance through your thoughtless selfishness.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

Another serious fetter upon the full use of England's power was the direction given to the French operations on land and the mistaken means used to oppose them.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

a small plate of shining 212 metal used to ornament a bridle, lorale , Prompt.
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

Such an avowed and defended magic usually takes one of two forms.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

I shall not therefore be angry.——Besides, as my cousin, with that odious Irish name, justly says, I have that regard for the honour and true interest of my family, and that concern for my niece, who is a part of it, that I have resolved to go to town myself upon this occasion; for indeed, indeed, brother, you are not a fit minister to be employed at a polite court.—Greenland—Greenland should always be the scene of the tramontane negociation.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

CHAPTER 42 One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor received her brother's congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton without any expense, and on Colonel Brandon's being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother and sisters in town;—and a faint invitation from Fanny, to come to Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all things was the most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less public, assurance, from John to Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should come to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting in the country.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

It would be difficult to invent new stitches or patterns and, we shall therefore confine ourselves to describing the stitches in general use, and reproducing those of the old patterns we consider the most useful, that our readers may make their own selection.
— from Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont

AND EVIL DEPENDS IN GREAT MEASURE UPON THE OPINION WE HAVE OF THEM Men (says an ancient Greek sentence)—[Manual of Epictetus, c. 10.]— are tormented with the opinions they have of things and not by the things themselves.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Pray is the Inquisition an ancient building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it a modern one?—I know nothing of architecture, replied Dr. Slop.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The year before I left Canada, in the fall, as the autumn is called there, I started with a number of other young men in our neighbourhood, the county town of C—, to go about seventy-five miles up the Ottawa, what is called lumbering.
— from Captain Mugford: Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors by William Henry Giles Kingston

Strange, but striking in the extreme, is the effect of the east end of this church rising close above the sea; far more truly admirable is the effect of the inside, where the coupled columns of the Saracen have been boldly taught to act as the piers of the great arcades, and to bear up above them a massive triforium, which by itself would make us think ourselves in Normandy or England.
— from Studies of Travel: Italy by Edward A. (Edward Augustus) Freeman

What, let me ask, is the most unerring test of female authorship?
— from The Authoress of the Odyssey Where and when she wrote, who she was, the use she made of the Iliad, and how the poem grew under her hands by Samuel Butler

Third: He desires to make us the object of his love.
— from And Judas Iscariot Together with other evangelistic addresses by J. Wilbur (John Wilbur) Chapman

As I waded through the mud to go down into the bombproof, it struck me uneasily that our officers glanced at each other.
— from Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany by Edward Lyell Fox

For more than twenty years steam-navigation has advanced with giant strides, overstepping several times the limits which science had assigned it; but the paddle-wheel, by which the agency of steam has been applied, forms so bad an alliance with canvas, and supplies so indifferently the requirements of a man-of-war, that it has been impossible by this intermediary to render steam the efficient coadjutor of sails; and it is for this reason that steam so speedily took rank as a primary motor upon the ocean; for, in all the successful marine applications of steam by means of the paddle, steam is the dominant power, and sails the accessory, or almost superfluous auxiliary.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

There too was de Vaudreuil, the Governor General, Commander-in-Chief, and last governor of New France, with his brother, the last Governor of Montreal under the Old Régime.
— from Montreal, 1535-1914. Vol. 2. Under British Rule, 1760-1914 by William H. (William Henry) Atherton

Sensible of his own incapacity to succeed without divine assistance, he employed his meditations upon the opinions [Pg. 353] that were then agitated among mankind, and sent up his ejaculations to heaven to inspire him with wisdom to choose the path he should pursue.
— from Pinnock's improved edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome to which is prefixed an introduction to the study of Roman history, and a great variety of valuable information added throughout the work, on the manners, institutions, and antiquities of the Romans; with numerous biographical and historical notes; and questions for examination at the end of each section. By Wm. C. Taylor. by Oliver Goldsmith

Get no credit, though——” His curiously mechanical utterance trailed off to be lost in a mere husky murmur.
— from Ruggles of Red Gap by Harry Leon Wilson

Creatures of the wild lands move mute under the oppression of unbounded space.
— from Dust of the Desert by Robert Welles Ritchie