One could rob the post in weather like this—easy as spitting.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“Suddenly,” says Dee, as they were thus employed, “there seemed to come out of the oratory a spiritual creature, like a pretty girl of seven or nine years of age, attired on her head, with her hair rolled up before and hanging down behind, with a gown of silk, of changeable red and green, and with a train.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

There are terribly few honest people here, and hardly any whom one can respect, although people put on airs—Varia especially!
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But Louisiana is one of the confederated States, and slaves may be carried thither from all parts of the Union; the price given for slaves in New Orleans consequently raises the value of slaves in all the other markets.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Again, there is a system of signs by which one can recognise, on inspecting the corpse the day after death, for what reasons it has been bewitched.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

Many old churches, replete with a thousand memories of the past, were pulled down entirely, and modern structures of “Victorian Gothic” style erected in their place, which can have none of the precious associations which the old churches had.
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

He would make retail traders only of the inferior sort of citizens (Rep. ii.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Asking pardon of animals —For other Cherokee references see remarks upon the Little Deer, the Wolf, and the Rattlesnake; also number 4 , “Origin of Disease and Medicine,” and number 58 , “The Rattlesnake’s Vengeance.”
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

At last, after meeting with innumerable obstacles and overcoming a host of difficulties, I succeeded, by means of all sorts of circuitous routes, in reaching my remote suburb, from which I was cut off by the fortified portions of the town, and especially by a cannonade directed from the Zwinger.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

But you will of course refuse to be pacified and wave it away, saying, "Useless, absolutely useless.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, 1920-07-28 by Various

"Of course, of course," replied the good-natured and well-intentioned Amanda, "I'd sooner have your father than Isaac Worthington.
— from Coniston — Volume 02 by Winston Churchill

QUAKER OATS TRAIN SCENE ON CEDAR RIVER ST.
— from History of Linn County Iowa From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911] by Luther Albertus Brewer

The following is a list of contributions received from October 1st up to and including October 31st, 1898.
— from The Quiver, 11/1899 by Anonymous

Pine-trees grew upon it; and here and there a plane-tree or a sumach dipped its large leaves over, and seemed intent on watching its own clear reflection.
— from Wonder-Box Tales by Jean Ingelow

No one can read the result of his observations without better and clearer perceptions of the structure of out governments, of the great pillars on which they rest, and of the dangers to which they are exposed: nor without a more profound and more intelligent admiration of the harmony and beauty of their formation, and of the safeguards provided for preserving and transmitting them to a distant posterity.
— from American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville

Then the soothing influence of comfort, respect, and security came upon him, and almost refined him.
— from For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

The third pair of maxillipedes seems to be always present, at least in the form of considerable rudiments.
— from Facts and Arguments for Darwin by Fritz Müller