ni estis , we were .
— from A Complete Grammar of Esperanto by Ivy Kellerman Reed

And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.
— from The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood

But the king, named Estouranse, who was a heathen tyrant, when he heard thereof took Sir Galahad and his fellows, and put them in prison in a deep hole.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

The Germans had not even what we should call towns, notwithstanding Caesar asserts the contrary.
— from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus

‘And that’s a fine thing to do, and manly too,’ said Nicholas, ‘though it’s not exactly what we understand by “coming Yorkshire over us” in London.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

like and it was extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday and throwing everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale!
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

“She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

With reference to the political prisoners, I recollect he repeated more than once: "You see, I stand in so much stronger a position than they do, in that I am not encumbered with wife and children; so I am resolved to strain every nerve on their behalf."
— from South African Memories Social, Warlike & Sporting from Diaries Written at the Time by Wilson, Sarah Isabella Augusta, Lady

Shall we not enjoy what we find?
— from Vittoria — Complete by George Meredith

What Sam had not expected was, without doubt, the wonderful success of his deception; the eagerness with which the country round accepted his inventions; the readiness with which they drank those innocent waters; the miraculous cures effected; and the transformation of the venerable old port and trading town into a haunt and resort of fashion and the pursuit of pleasure.
— from The Lady of Lynn by Walter Besant

The snow was a poor relief, and I had nothing else with which to quench my thirst.
— from Travels in Kamtschatka, during the years 1787 and 1788, Volume 2 by Lesseps, Jean-Baptiste-Barthélemy, baron de

Not even when Walter is with you?" asked Bess.
— from Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the Runaways by Annie Roe Carr

It had never occurred to us, not even when we camped beneath wayside shade around our sandwiches and ale or in some stiff and dim inn-parlor and listened to the reading of the "News," that in reality the town of M——, and not the brickhood of Ethel, was thus the centre of all our ambulatory circumferences.
— from Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 by Various

First, he says, that "there was nothing offensive to the Greeks in these things which we regard as horrible and indecent, therefore it must be admitted that they were not exactly what we take them to have been, in short, ideas have changed."
— from A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01 by Voltaire

Nocturnal exploits with women; drunkenness.
— from Crimes of Preachers in the United States and Canada by M. E. Billings

Full of pain, we tread between contempt and hatred, two rocks alike formidable; by the efforts we make to [62] avoid them we weaken our powers, and sink into despondency, for after having experienced the injustice of mankind, we contract a habit of accounting it a necessary evil; when we have accustomed ourselves to have less regard for the opinions of the world than for our own repose, and when the heart, hardened by the wounds it has received, has become insensible, we easily attain that state of indifference, that indolent tranquillity, of which, a few years before, we should have been ashamed.
— from Buffon's Natural History. Volume 05 (of 10) Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c by Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de