The picturesque Cuban society, which King knew well, was more amusing than any other that one had yet discovered in the whole broad world, but made no profession of teaching anything unless it were Cuban Spanish or the danza ; and neither on his own nor on King's account did the visitor ask any loftier study than that of the buzzards floating on the trade-wind down the valley to Dos Bocas, or the colors of sea and shore at sunrise from the height of the Gran Piedra; but, as though they were still twenty years old and revolution were as young as they, the decaying fabric, which had never been solid, fell on their heads and drew them with it into an ocean of mischief.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she likes."
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

But we that tame wild beasts and make them gentle, and carry in our arms young wolves and lions' whelps, inconsistently repel our children and friends and acquaintances in our rage, and let loose our temper like some wild beast on our servants and fellow-citizens, speciously trying to disguise it not rightly under the name of hatred of evil, but it is, I suppose, as with the other passions and diseases of the soul, we cannot get rid of any of them by calling one prudence, and another liberality, and another piety.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

This accounts for the continuation of monarchy; neither do the characters of the few good kings which have lived since, either sanctify the title, or blot out the sinfulness of the origin; the high encomium given of David takes no notice of him officially as a king , but only as a man after God’s own heart.
— from Common Sense by Thomas Paine

What signifies [ I obtained mercy ] but only that I should not otherwise have obtained it had not folly and ignorance been my vindication?
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

He was open with her; he liked talking to her in a low voice in the evening, and even gave her novels of his own composition to read, though these had been kept a secret even from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

He had been obliged to leave about ninety of his own men in the field-hospital which he had established near Trevilian, and these necessarily fell into the hands of the enemy.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

If he was footsore and couldn’t walk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride, lest he should have none of his own to spare.’
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

do you not see that the cannibal has commenced the attack?" "A shell is not worth the life of a man," said I. "Ah! the scoundrel!" cried Conseil; "I would rather he had broken my shoulder!" Conseil was in earnest, but I was not of his opinion.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

She had always had crazy notions of her own about her dignity, and that word "idiot" upset her in a moment.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

She placed a cool damp cloth on the baby's head, wishing that its mother would come up, Mrs. Hobbs having been persuaded to go downstairs for some tea and a rest while Nellie watched by the sick child and having been entangled in household affairs the moment she appeared in the dingy kitchen where Mrs. Macanany, to the neglect of her own home, was "seeing to things."
— from The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel by John Miller

The consultant was a man who had been hardened by a life of ceaseless labour, and who had been driven, as so many others have been, by the needs of his own increasing family to set the commercial before the philanthropic side of his profession.
— from Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life by Arthur Conan Doyle

Washington is the name of hundreds of places in the States.
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

I felt horribly nervous, and at first he did nothing to help me, but what was far worse, he kept on transmitting thoughts that made me every moment more wretched and uncomfortable; they must have been his, as I feel sure they would never otherwise have occurred to me as being likely to proceed from the smiling old gentleman sitting opposite.
— from The Chariot of the Flesh by Hedley Peek

The Mayor and Sheriffs stood at the Guildhall, and read the royal proclamation by the light of a wax candle, held in the trembling hand of one of the clerks; but no one heard or heeded them, and the uproar was increased as the doors of Newgate fell, and all the felons rushed out to join the rioters.
— from The Armourer's Prentices by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

He said that Oswald was to be transferred at 10 o'clock, that they expected some crowds downtown and they thought they would need our help, or a crowd was gathering, I think is what—the way he had actually said it.
— from Warren Commission (12 of 26): Hearings Vol. XII (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

The Rector, who had come home moody and troubled, and who had made no inquiry into Sophocles, neither had shown the interest that was expected in Jim’s expedition to Winwick with the curate, looked up fretfully and begged his son to have a little respect for other people’s occupations if he had none of his own.
— from Lady William by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Mention has been made of the rectory of Greshamsbury; but, hitherto, no opportunity has offered itself for the Rev Caleb Oriel to come upon the boards.
— from Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Number of houses or lodges.
— from History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. II To the Sources of the Missouri, Thence Across the Rocky Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Performed During the Years 1804-5-6. by William Clark

So buoyant was her natural temperament that she was completely carried away by the glory of Cleveland, and already saw fulfilled therein not only her own desires for a nice home, but the prosperous advancement of her children.
— from Jennie Gerhardt: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser