Again, the majority of mankind have really experienced some moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has tendencies to good, and is capable of becoming better.
— from Phaedo by Plato

If he be a big man, then is he a Samson, another Hercules; if he pronounce a speech, another Tully or Demosthenes; as of Herod in the Acts, the voice of God and not of man: if he can make a verse, Homer, Virgil, &c., And then my silly weak patient takes all these eulogiums to himself; if he be a scholar so commended for his much reading, excellent style, method, &c., he will eviscerate himself like a spider, study to death, Laudatas ostendit avis Junonia pennas , peacock-like he will display all his feathers.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Rosamond, examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

For look you, I may make the belly smile As well as speak- it tauntingly replied To th' discontented members, the mutinous parts That envied his receipt; even so most fitly As you malign our senators for that They are not such as you.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

When I re-entered, after working two hours, to take some food and rest, I found a perceptible difference between the pure fluid with which the Rouquayrol engine supplied me and the atmosphere of the Nautilus, already charged with carbonic acid.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

highness, excellency, grace; lordship, worship; reverence, reverend; esquire, sir, master, Mr., signor, senor, Mein Herr[Ger], mynheer[obs3]; your honor, his honor; serene highness; handle to one's name.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

" "But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

An age which has brought forth the magnetic telegraph, steamships and railway engines, sewing-machines, mowing-machines, gas-light, and innumerable discoveries and inventions of marvellous utility—not to allude to those of our own decade—should have no other use for ghostology than a scientific one.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

Her theory of the mutability of species exceeded Darwin's; for she fancied that the vegetable world was occasionally endowed with animal life, and that the luxuriant and often poisonous vines, which choked by their rude embrace so many tenderer forms of life, waked up, under some unknown influence, into the snakes, of which she felt as little fear.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various

Because competitor countries have fluctuating exchange rates, El Salvador must face the challenge of raising productivity and lowering costs.
— from The 2003 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

But to be able to find them you have first to read ever so many novels about Sir Galahad and the Errant Quest and that sort of thing.
— from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock

Few other resources exist so most necessities must be imported, including fresh water from Australia.
— from The 1991 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

"Go to bed, Joseph; rest easy," said Monsieur Goulden.
— from The Conscript: A Story of the French war of 1813 by Erckmann-Chatrian

His white hair was combed, its ragged edges showing more obviously, and his gaunt cheeks were covered by a stubble of frosty beard.
— from The Turn of the Balance by Brand Whitlock