In England and Holland the farmer pays very little, and in China nothing: yet these are the countries in which the land is best cultivated.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

upon, PP; uppen , S; apon , S2. Phr. : vpon lofte , above, S2. Up-right , adv. on one’s back, C, C2; upryghte , C2.
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

And no doubt there are some pains required to enter into these arguments; though perhaps very little are necessary to perceive the imperfection of every vulgar hypothesis on this subject, and the little light, which philosophy can yet afford us in such sublime and such curious speculations.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Meanwhile the arrest and summary punishment of landlords, or their agents, who persistently violate law and decency, will have a salutary effect.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

Much more then ought those who aim at virtue and what is noble to lose no opportunity of public speaking, paying very little attention to either uproar or applause at their speeches.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

From the previous chapters the reader will, of course, understand that Americans and Europeans at Manila in August, 1898, were paying very little attention to Aguinaldo and his claims as to the extent of his authority in the provinces.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

atoliende disfiguring , WW 220 26 . ātor , āt(to)r, (ǣ) n. poison, venom , Lcd ; AO, CP: gall , Gl .
— from A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary For the Use of Students by J. R. Clark (John R. Clark) Hall

Florence indeed, as M. Renan has pointed out, had always had an affinity for the mystic and dreamy philosophy of Plato, while the colder and more practical philosophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, and other cities of the north; and the Florentines, though they knew perhaps very little about him, had had the name of the great idealist often on their lips.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

IV THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

It seemed to him as if he were going to see something he had known once, perhaps very long ago, something that he had forgotten and that was now going to be recalled to his memory.
— from The Call of the Blood by Robert Hichens

I am no longer a true and loyal knight in your estimation ... but something, perhaps, very like a rebel and a traitor?...
— from Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Vol. 1) by Frances Milton Trollope

The form of the Pirate Chief towered above them all as he ran up and down the beach yowling out all sorts of commands to which was paid very little attention by any one, and stopping every little while to flourish an angry paw in the direction of the Merry Mouser .
— from The Wonderful Bed by Gertrude Knevels

He might have given himself six or eight when he began to think the joke no trifle, and its price very low; and holding his hand for a moment, he told his master that he cried off on the score of a blind bargain, for each of those lashes ought to be paid for at the rate of half a real instead of a quarter.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Five thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, with food thrown in!”
— from The Little Lady of the Big House by Jack London

In the last of June, 1809, the menagerie of the Museum of Natural History having received a Phoca ( Phoca vitulina ), Lamarck, as he says, had the opportunity of observing its movements and habits.
— from Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution His Life and Work by A. S. (Alpheus Spring) Packard

Dilvcidæ simplicivm medicamenorvm explicationes, & stirpivm adversaria, perfacilis vestigatio, luculentaque accessio ad priscorum, præsertim Dioscoridis & recentiorum materiæ medicæ solidam cognitionem.
— from The Old English Herbals by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

liberorum vero Imperiorum originem fuisse hominum metum, qui sese impares propulsandæ externorum injuriæ sentientes, aliquem sibi Principem creavere, datamque sibi a Deo naturalem ulciscendi injurias potestatem, volentes libentesque alteri tradiderunt?
— from Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe by Jaime Luciano Balmes