The Dunciad is little read to-day except by professed students of English letters, but it made, naturally enough, a great stir at the time and vastly provoked the wrath of all the dunces whose names it dragged to light.
— from The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems by Alexander Pope

Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

But the correct solution is to place six of each of two letters and five of each of the remaining four.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

Note 64 ( return ) [ Sherefeddin (l. vi. c. 24) mentions the ambassadors of one of the most potent sovereigns of Europe.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

tarry &c. (be late) 133; drag on, drag its slow length along, drag a lengthening chain; protract, prolong; spin out, eke out, draw out, lengthen out; temporize; gain time, make time, talk against time.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

I was yet young, but the pleasing sentiments of enjoyment and hope, which enliven youth, were extinguished.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The very title of Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" is a denial of Aristotelianism and, in the pregnant sense, of evolution.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

And then, as they looked more carefully at one another and saw how tossed and tumbled were their pretty suits of embroidered white velvet, they burst out crying, saying— "We are not fit to be seen By her Majesty the Queen; Our clothes are all blue and green, Who will wash and make them clean?"
— from Little Folks (September 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

Moses, whose mighty mind drew from obscurity Theism, or a belief in the One God, to become the corner-stone of the creed, not of a few initiated sages and esoteric students, but of a whole people—who shared out to mankind their birthright, a knowledge of divine truth—fully understood the fatal error of his preceptors, the priestly sages of Egypt.
— from The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

Large and splendid desk (for two people, sitting opposite each other) about the middle of the room.
— from The Honeymoon: A comedy in three acts by Arnold Bennett

If it be true that the proper study of mankind is man, it is at least as true that the proper study of Englishmen is the history of England; that, however, means a great deal more than is usually understood by the words.
— from The Coming of the Friars by Augustus Jessopp

They stand heavy pine spars on end, if rather short, say 8 feet, the common length of many intended for making coffins, and cut them up into three-eighths or half-inch stuff with great patience.
— from Scientific American, Volume 22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 A Weekly Journal of Practical Information, Art, Science, Mechanics, Chemistry, and Manufactures. by Various

He was the eldest brother, the head of the house, and the purest saint on earth could not have condemned the generous pride which rose in Huntley’s breast.
— from The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Incapable of continuous effort but extremely intelligent, always loving or hating passionately, speaking of everything with the ingenious ardor of a man fanatically convinced, variable as he was enthusiastic, he possessed to an excessive degree the true feminine temperament, the credulity, the charm, the mobility, the nervous sensibility of a woman, with the superior intellect, active, comprehensive, and penetrating, of a man.
— from Mont Oriol; or, A Romance of Auvergne: A Novel by Guy de Maupassant

It was always pleasant and interesting to see them in the fall as soon as the nights began to be [179] frosty, hard at work cutting sedges on the edge of the meadow or swimming out through the rushes, making long glittering ripples as they sculled themselves along, diving where the water is perhaps six or eight feet deep and reappearing in a minute or so with large mouthfuls of the weedy tangled plants gathered from the bottom, returning to their big wigwams, climbing up and depositing their loads where most needed to make them yet larger and firmer and warmer, foreseeing the freezing weather just like ourselves when we banked up our house to keep out the frost.
— from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir

[531] The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget’s pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow.
— from Archaic England An Essay in Deciphering Prehistory from Megalithic Monuments, Earthworks, Customs, Coins, Place-names, and Faerie Superstitions by Harold Bayley

The Brazils will assist to take a sufficient quantity for consumption, (and, as well as my memory serves me, they produce seventy or eighty thousand bags annually;) and South America will add her supplies.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16) by United States. Congress