Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s hat) having detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend’s bona fides nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

we all of us have had our difficulties, and to surmount them occasionally we are driven to make unprofitable bargains, but we “rub through,” and so will Greece and Spain and those other countries where they are borrowing at twelve or twenty per cent, and raise a loan each year to discharge the dividends.
— from The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly by Charles James Lever

That one hundred and fifty brace of trout, averaging a pound in weight, are taken with rod and line each year on a stretch of water two miles in length, and varying in depth from two to three feet, with a few deep holes, the width of the water being not more than thirty feet for the most part, is sufficient proof that there is abundance of food in the river.
— from A Cotswold Village; Or, Country Life and Pursuits in Gloucestershire by J. Arthur (Joseph Arthur) Gibbs

If there was, I wou'd raise a little Earthquake yet in this Kingdom.
— from A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. In the Isles of St. Patrick's Church, Dublin, On that Memorable Day, October 9th, 1753 by Anonymous

I fancied you might not relish a like experience; your face is far too handsome to be spoiled in that way.
— from At the Sign of the Silver Flagon by B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon

It is explained that the northern belt of Canada lying in a semi-arctic zone should hardly be included in comparisons with the area of the United States lying altogether in a temperate zone; but if cultivation is proving one thing more than another, it is that Canada's arctic region recedes a little every year, and her isothermal lines run a little farther north every year.
— from The Canadian Commonwealth by Agnes C. Laut