Go to the Red Sea; on the right shore stand many rods—count them, and when thou comest to the eleventh, break it off, and smite the dragon with it; and so the lion will have the victory, and both of them will appear to you in their own forms.
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

[Pg 52] Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing the Christmas puddings in the kitchen, and had been drawn away from them, with a raisin still on her cheek, by Nana's absurd suspicions.
— from Peter and Wendy by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

Her father followed her to the open door, stood a moment watching her, and then came back, but remained standing, or rather strolling to and fro, as if to cultivate a sense of freedom which in another attitude might be wanting.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

RELISH, savour. REMNANT, scrap of quotation.
— from The Alchemist by Ben Jonson

At the time, however, the simple-hearted devotion and kindness of this young man were very welcome both to myself and my wife, who often felt lonely, and his friendship was a real source of help in our darkest hours of adversity.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

Chapter III, Div. III ), it is not rarity within utility which creates value, but a rarity sought out by human skill within the workable materials.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well- or ill-being of the state.
— from Laws by Plato

It is a truly wonderful fact—the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity—that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in groups, subordinate to groups, in the manner which we everywhere behold—namely, varieties of the same species most closely related, species of the same genus less closely and unequally related, forming sections and sub-genera, species of distinct genera much less closely related, and genera related in different degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders, sub-classes, and classes.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

ATHENIAN: And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer? CLEINIAS: Exactly.
— from Laws by Plato

It was therefore the best appellation which Tophania could give to her poison, because the reputed sanctity of it prevented the custom-house officers from examining it too closely.
— from A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2) by Johann Beckmann

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours.
— from More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters by Charles Darwin

A Collective Term denotes a multitude of similar things considered as forming one whole, as 'regiment,' 'flock,' 'nation': not distributively, that is, not the similar things severally; to denote them we must say 'soldiers of the regiment,' 'sheep of the flock,' and so on.
— from Logic: Deductive and Inductive by Carveth Read

As [Pg 33] very rare survivals of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals of half a century ago?)
— from My Life as an Author by Martin Farquhar Tupper

It would be uncandid in me to be silent concerning the marked difference I found in the feelings of the two royal sisters of Her Majesty.
— from Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI. — Volume 7 Being secret memoirs of Madame Du Hausset, lady's maid to Madame de Pompadour, and of the Princess Lamballe by Mme. Du Hausset

The wanton luxury of the enormously rich, the pinching poverty of the very poor, the political and social exaltation of the very few, the ruthless suppression of the many, here stared me in the face on every hand.
— from Through Scandinavia to Moscow by William Seymour Edwards

Page 2 {2} Some modern physiologists regard sensibility, others irritability, as the characteristic of life, and define life as the faculty of responding, by some sort of change, to an external stimulus.
— from The Mechanism of Life by Stéphane Leduc

"And they will refuse it," said Crossthwaite; "they're going, I hear, to revive some old law or other, that forbids processions within such and such a distance of the House of Commons.
— from Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography by Charles Kingsley

So I saw Mr. James Rowe at the left side of Sir James' head and shoulder, and Mr. Philip Standsfield at the right side of his head and shoulder; and, going to lift off the body, I saw Mr. Philip drop the head of his father upon the form, and much blood in hand, and himself flying off from the body, crying, 'Lord, have mercy upon me,' or 'upon us,' wiping off the blood on his clothes, and so laying himself over a seat in the church; some, supposing that he would swaiff or swoon away, called for a bottle of water for him."
— from The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the Curious by Frank H. Stauffer