The passage is more or less autobiographical.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

It suffices to say that in general the school has been the institution which exhibited with greatest clearness the assumed antithesis between purely individualistic methods of learning and social action, and between freedom and social control.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

But with gentle touch Venus subdues the pangs in midst of love, And the admixture of a fondling joy Doth curb the bites of passion.
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus

Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Your best way of taking it, is to bruise it well, and boil it in white wine till half be consumed, you may put in much, or little, according to the strength of the diseased, it works very safely.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

We read the paper and it ran thus: "When I was a child my father had a slave who taught me to pray the Christian prayer in my own language, and told me many things about Lela Marien.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

We at once gave him what he required, and he set about translating it bit by bit, and when he had done he said: “All that is here in Spanish is what the Moorish paper contains, and you must bear in mind that when it says ‘Lela Marien’ it means ‘Our Lady the Virgin Mary.’” We read the paper and it ran thus: “When I was a child my father had a slave who taught me to pray the Christian prayer in my own language, and told me many things about Lela Marien.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and being sure that everything is ready to receive her.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

A commodity may be said to be dear or cheap not only according to the absolute greatness or smallness of its usual price, but according as that price is more or less above the lowest for which it is possible to bring it to market for any considerable time together.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

A glance at the map, however, will show that Poland is more or less a wedge driven into German territory.
— from The Russian Advance by Marr Murray

This platform is more or less a puzzle.
— from The World's Earliest Music Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer by Hermann Smith

But these differences are rapidly disappearing before the unparalleled diffusion and simplification of knowledge, the still more amazing progress in means of locomotion, and the political and military causes that are manifestly converting Europe into a federation of vast centralised and democratic States.
— from History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2) by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Books form a large place in my own life, and I would regret to be separated from them.
— from Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative by George Wharton James

Even where found in these places, its mode of life approximates more to that of the European species; that is, it burrows instead of builds.
— from Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found: A Book of Zoology for Boys by Mayne Reid

All women are born to intrigue, Jack; and practise it more or less, as fathers, guardians, governesses, from dear experience, can tell; and in love affairs are naturally expert, and quicker in their wits by half than men.
— from Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 6 by Samuel Richardson

At present this separation is not so strenuously enforced as in earlier times, but whoever would seek to form a more accurate idea of the various races of this population, its mode of life and its demeanour, must leave the so-called "Fort," and wander through the native or Cingalese quarter.
— from Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, Volume I (Commodore B. Von Wullerstorf-Urbair,) Undertaken by Order of the Imperial Government in the Years 1857, 1858, & 1859, Under the Immediate Auspices of His I. and R. Highness the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Commander-In-Chief of the Austrian Navy. by Scherzer, Karl, Ritter von

Doctor Goel sat in his own room, pipe in mouth, over leaves and roots and such like rubbish, now and then coming out to ask me questions, giving as his reason for so doing that I had a quick eye, and a habit of observation remarkable in one unskilled in the sciences,
— from The MS. in a Red Box by John A. (John Arthur) Hamilton