,’ said the elder Mr. Weller. ‘Do,’ said Sam. ‘Not on no account,’ replied the inexorable creditor.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

A man who is running a race, neck or nothing, a race that means life or death, has no time to think of anything outside the course.
— from Wyllard's Weird: A Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

This daring soldier, a native of Nice and reared to a life on the sea, was banished as a revolutionist in 1834, and the succeeding fourteen years of his life were largely spent in South America, in whose wars he played a leading part.
— from Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century by Charles Morris

In a very few years after Brindley’s death in 1772, an immense number of navigation Acts received the sanction of Parliament, canals began to be freely quoted “on ’Change,” and, in 1790, “the canal mania” began.
— from Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries With a description of the Panama, Suez, Manchester, Nicaraguan, and other canals. by J. Stephen (James Stephen) Jeans

He, however, not only never afterwards repeated this doctrine, but in reality taught the very opposite in his unequivocal proclamation of the universality of divine grace, of the all-sufficiency of the merits of Christ, and of the universal operation of the means of grace; and he even opposed that doctrine
— from Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church by F. (Friedrich) Bente

The brothers, now one, now another, raised their heads and looked in silent questioning at the new comer.
— from Legends of the Rhine by Wilhelm Ruland

Well, I shall be natural or nothing, and recount that I could not help rejoicing that Jessie was Scotch, and that Scotchmen first broke the rebels' lines and reached the fort, and that the bagpipes led the way.
— from Round the World by Andrew Carnegie