Plato has an evident dislike of the Athenian dicasteries; he prefers a few judges who take a leading part in the conduct of trials to a great number who only listen in silence.
— from Laws by Plato

gas pipe has an external diameter of 3 1 ⁄ 2 inches, while 3 in.
— from Maxims and Instructions for the Boiler Room Useful to Engineers, Firemen & Mechanics; Relating to Steam Generators, Pumps, Appliances, Steam Heating, Practical Plumbing, etc. by N. (Nehemiah) Hawkins

The chief of the district—a young man, who wore his hair curiously formed into the shape of a cone, bound round with white thread—on their refusing to pay him an extortionate demand, ordered his people not to ferry them across, and opened fire on them.
— from Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley by William Henry Giles Kingston

Grasan porkegon, grasan porkegon, Ho alportu en domegon! OH, PRETTY LITTLE GIRL, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
— from Facts in Jingles by Winifred Sackville Stoner

This is a plain proof that the people here are entirely destitute of that high civilization which prevails among us.
— from Tour in England, Ireland, and France, in the years 1826, 1827, 1828 and 1829. with remarks on the manners and customs of the inhabitants, and anecdotes of distiguished public characters. In a series of letters by a German Prince. by Pückler-Muskau, Hermann, Fürst von

The other exception, induced by the expense of the Valencia expulsion, the cost of which had been swelled to eight hundred thousand ducats, threw upon the exiles all the charges, not only of the journeys and voyage, but the wages of the superintending officials and half a real per head as export duty on what they carried with them, all of which amounted to twenty-four reales at the Alfaques de Tortosa.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3 by Henry Charles Lea

Recent works on the psychology of education, however, have made plain how an excessive development of a child's lower mental faculties may arrest its later growth in all the higher departments of its intellectual nature; the development of a mechanical memory is well known as a serious obstacle to the higher activities of reason.
— from Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic by Sidney Lewis Gulick