In order to put Great Britain upon a footing of equality with her own colonies, which the law has hitherto supposed to be subject and subordinate, it seems necessary, upon the scheme of taxing them by parliamentary requisition, that parliament should have some means of rendering its requisitions immediately effectual, in case the colony assemblies should attempt to evade or reject them; and what those means are, it is not very easy to conceive, and it has not yet been explained.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Near unto this school, on the north side thereof, was of old time a great and high clochier, or bell-house, four square, built of stone, and in the same a most strong frame of timber, with four bells, the greatest that I have heard; these were called Jesus’ bells, and belonged to Jesus’ chapel, but I know not by whose gift: the same had a great spire of timber covered with lead, with the image of St. Paul on the top, but was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, knight, in the reign of Henry VIII.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

However that may have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of “Eye-Witness.”
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes His Last Bow An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Part of a collection of stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published as a book entitled His Last Bow) It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August--the most terrible August in the history of the world.
— from His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Since I am now upon the subject of my Venetian acquaintance, I must not forget one which I still preserved for a considerable time after my intercourse with the rest had ceased.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island, and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great, middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as ‘tis customary at Paris, Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

These the Corinthians had released, nominally upon the security of eight hundred talents given by their proxeni, but in reality upon their engagement to bring over Corcyra to Corinth.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Not unfrequently, the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men, to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that trained scholars might envy.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians by George G. (George Gillanders) Findlay

They are not under the sultan of Makalla, but independent.
— from Southern Arabia by Bent, Theodore, Mrs.

The Companies are authorized, if they deem it necessary to the construction or to the efficient operation of the terminal passenger yard or freight yard, to depress, at their expense, any pipes or other sub-surface structures now under the surface of any of the portions of the streets or avenues discontinued or closed, or to elevate and carry the same upon any of the viaducts or bridges, the plans of such depression or elevation to be approved by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment.
— from Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 The New York Tunnel Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Paper No. 1150 by Charles W. Raymond

"I do not like it," said Lady Ilfield, who was one of the old school, and did not understand the science of modern flirtation.
— from A Mad Love by Charlotte M. Brame

[34] The clauses of the Bill were carefully gone through; a proviso inserted by the Lords, that no man should be deprived for not using the surplice or the Cross in Baptism, was thrown out; [35] several amendments were carried, and a conference of the two Houses was held for their consideration.
— from The Acts of Uniformity: Their Scope and Effect by T. A. (Thomas Alexander) Lacey

Do not underrate the strength of a thing because it is bad, nor doubt its reality because you do not like its looks.
— from To Leeward by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

Dana had time to wonder at the use of a baton—criminals didn't normally use that sort of weapon—before the leader approached her, holding another one.
— from Thakur-na: A Terran Empire story by Ann Wilson

I am not poetically gifted, and do not understand the science of making much out of a little, so I cannot say how miserable I felt.
— from Missing Friends Being the Adventures of a Danish Emigrant in Queensland (1871-1880) by Thorvald Peter Ludwig Weitemeyer

The centre of these flowers is occupied by a two to five-celled pistil, between the carpels of which, not unfrequently, the stem of the plant projects, bearing on its sides bracts and rudimentary flowers.
— from Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants by Maxwell T. (Maxwell Tylden) Masters