The Negroes are put in a peculiarly difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below the standard, while the openings for colored women in certain lines of domestic work, and now in industries, are many.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Why this should be we are not at present in a position even to imagine; we must take the fact as an empirical law of animal morphology, the reason of which may possibly be one day found in the history of the evolution of the shark tribe, but for which it is hopeless to seek for an explanation in ordinary physiological reasonings.
— from The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" by Thomas Henry Huxley

The two conditions of success which we named as primary in a previous chapter, viz., [118] religious principle and previous acquaintance , were apparently secured.
— from History of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes

I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy and resisting a pretence.
— from An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent by John Henry Newman

And has it not almost passed into a proverb, that my Lord Duke's Natural and most Inveterate Enemy is my Lord Marquis, who is his Heir?
— from The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors... by George Augustus Sala

The slate near the dikes generally becomes paler-coloured, harder, less fissile, of a feldspathic nature, and passes into a porphyry or greenstone: in one case, however, it became more fissile, of a red colour, and contained minute scales of mica, which were absent in the unaltered rock.
— from Geological Observations on South America by Charles Darwin

French painter, died neglected and penniless in a pauper hospital.
— from Genius in Sunshine and Shadow by Maturin Murray Ballou

Perhaps a treaty might be entered into (if it were not for the United States Senate) which, when ratified, should be published in all newspapers and posted in all public places in both countries, setting forth that: " In consideration of the Party of the Second Part hereafter cherishing a belief in the marital fidelity [ 339 ] and general moral purity of all members of the British peerage, their wives, heirs, daughters, and near relations, and further agreeing that when, by any unfortunate mishap, any individual member of the said Peerage or his wife, daughter, or other relation shall have been discovered and publicly shown to have offended against the marriage laws or otherwise violated the canons of common decency, to understand and take it for granted that such mishap, offence, or violation is a quite exceptional occurrence owing to the unexplainable depravity of the individual and that it in no way reflects upon the other members of the said Peerage, whether in the mass or individually, or their wives, daughters, or near relations: Therefore the Party of the First Part hereby agrees to decline to give any credence whatsoever to any story, remark, or reflection to the discredit of the general honesty of the American commercial classes or public men, but agrees that he will hereafter assume them to be trustworthy and truthful whether individually or in the mass, except in such cases as shall have been publicly proven to the contrary, and that he will always understand and declare that such isolated cases are purely sporadic and not in any way to be taken as evidences either of an epidemic or of a general low state of public morality, but that on the contrary the said American commercial classes do, whether in the mass or individually, hate and despise an occasional scoundrel among them as heartily as would the Party of the First Part hate and despise such a scoundrel if found among his own people—as, he confesses, does occasionally occur."
— from The Twentieth Century American Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations by Harry Perry Robinson

He leaned over the taffrail of Crow’s Nest and put it as politely as he could.
— from The Deep Sea's Toll by James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

In the cities they do neither; and public interests are placed in the hands of professional politicians who act often from base and sordid motives.
— from The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People by John R. (John Randolph) Dos Passos