"Take my mother," he said, stretching out his hand to her with an imploring expression on his face, "I poisoned her existence, according to her ideas disgraced the name of Liharev, did her as much harm as the most malignant enemy, and what do you think?
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton; and because you say you love such discourses as these, of rivers, and fish, and fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you.
— from The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton

"But there's just this one little difference, Hardwick: a machine, in a factory or in politics, is a mighty necessary thing, and we wouldn't get very far nowadays without it.
— from The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush by Francis Lynde

“The editor was a friend of Edward’s, and in our London days he asked me to write letters on things in general, and when I said I saw the world through a key-hole, he answered that a circumscribed view gained in distinctness.
— from The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

I'm the only officer left down here, and most of the greasers have been hurt.
— from Under the Star-Spangled Banner: A Tale of the Spanish-American War by F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton

He had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.'
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume II. Indian Summer of a Forsyte In Chancery by John Galsworthy

In the second place, it does away with the descent of the rubbish which, falling under the worker's feet when the boring is done from below, sooner or later discourages her and makes her abandon her enterprise.
— from Bramble-Bees and Others by Jean-Henri Fabre

There is, no doubt, such a thing as honest adulation; and it is possible that for the moment Byron and Leigh Hunt were equals in fame and achievement to the poet, who, a short while earlier or later, declared himself a mere earthworm in comparison with the godlike author of Cain ,— ‘the worm beneath the sod May lift itself in homage of the God.’
— from The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 2 (of 2) by John Cordy Jeaffreson