We do indeed excuse the mass of the citizens, who only follow the voice of the laws, but we refuse to admit as guardians any who do not labour to obtain every possible evidence that there is respecting the Gods; our city is forbidden and not allowed to choose as a guardian of the law, or to place in the select order of virtue, him who is not an inspired man, and has not laboured at these things.
— from Laws by Plato

I was much concerned at this: And he said, Had I a hundred sisters, Pamela, their opposition should have no weight with me: and I did not intend you should know it; but you can't but expect a little difficulty from the pride of my sister, who have suffered so much from that of her brother; and we are too nearly allied in mind, as well as blood, I find.—But this is not her business:
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

I didn't find her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

When nothing else was to be done, I have worked in many a market-garden afore now, and in many a hop-garden too.'
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

There's good i' this world—I've a feeling o' that now; and it makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he can see, i' spite
— from Silas Marner by George Eliot

As to the first, in a strategic point of view, a Russian army on the Rhine or in Italy, in alliance with the German States, would certainly be stronger and more favorably situated than if it had reached either of these points by passing over hostile or even neutral territory; for its base, lines of operations, and eventual points of support will be the same as those of its allies; it may find refuge behind their lines of defense, provisions in their depots, and munitions in their arsenals;—while in the other case its resources would be upon the Vistula or the Niemen, and it might afford another example of the sad fate of many of these great invasions.
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

“What with the dear King and the dear Duke, we really had brought ourselves to believe that we lived in the days of Versailles or nearly; and I must admit I think we had become a little too exclusive.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred might form the opinion that there can be no advantage in moving any of them, but if so they would be wrong.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

“Mining in Kinta, like mining in Lârut, is for stream tin, and this is found literally everywhere in [ 252 ] Kinta; it is washed out of the sand in the river-beds—a very favourite employment with Mandheling women; Kinta natives do not affect it much, although there is more than one stream where a good worker can earn a dollar per day; it is mined for in the valley, and sluiced for on the sides of hills; and, lastly, a very suggestive fact to a geologist, it has been found on the tops of isolated limestone bluffs and in the caves 225 which some of them contain.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

In the berths, of course, no attempt is made at costly decoration of this kind, though the fittings are good and sufficiently luxurious.
— from Man on the Ocean: A Book about Boats and Ships by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

Two or three days passed, bringing no answer to her letter, and Ann began to be nervously agitated in mind as to whether it had reached its destination safely or not.
— from The Vision of Desire by Margaret Pedler

The poem lacks balance and unity of plan, but abounds in passages of exquisite feeling, wrought through the keen vision of those significant accessories that make a great, if fragmentary picture of 285 the commanding personality so near akin in many aspects to his modern namesake and disciple, yet strangely removed from him in temperament and character.
— from Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement by Esther (of Hampstead) Wood

There have been more numerous, and infinitely more atrocious, crimes committed in France during any one half year since the beginning of the Revolution, than during the whole of that tumultuous period.
— from Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and reading societies. by John Robison

"I doctered a chicken this mornin' while you was gone, with some carbolic acid," answered Miss Nancy, "and I might 'a' left a few dregs in the cup."
— from The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields by Sarah Bell Hackley

Captain Thomas (late Bonnet) of the Royal James (late Revenge) had always enjoyed cool nights and invigorating morning air, and therefore it was that he said to his faithful servitor, Ben Greenway, when first he stepped out upon the deck as his vessel lay comfortably anchored in a little cove in the Cape Fear River, that he did not remember ever having been in a more pleasant harbour.
— from Kate Bonnet: The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter by Frank Richard Stockton

The death of this one little child, whom no one knew and for whom no one cared, was of less than no account; it made a small paragraph in the newspapers—it had caused some little commotion on the pier—just a little hurry at the work-house, and then it was forgotten.
— from The Tragedy of the Chain Pier Everyday Life Library No. 3 by Charlotte M. Brame

These novels are impersonal; Miss Austen never herself appears; and if she ever had a lover, we cannot decide whom he resembled among the many masculine portraits she has drawn.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various