SCREW, a mean or stingy person.
— from A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James. by John Camden Hotten

You are inexpressibly good, sir, said I; but I am far from taking a gentle disposition to shew a meanness of spirit:
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

But with the working ant we have an insect differing greatly from its parents, yet absolutely sterile; so that it could never have transmitted successively acquired modifications of structure or instinct to its progeny.
— 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

And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition, as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause; only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites.
— from Utopia by More, Thomas, Saint

The taking of a vote and the subjection of the minority serves the purpose of avoiding such actual measurement of strength, but accomplishes practically the same result through the count of votes, since the minority is convinced of the futility of such resort to force.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

So smooth, so level, such a mode of shaving The earth, as scarce the eagle in the broad Air can accomplish, with his wide wings waving.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

In relating how Agathocles carried off his cousin, who was wedded to another man, from the festival of the unveiling, he asks, “Who could have done such a deed, unless he had harlots instead of maidens in his eyes?” 6 And Plato himself, elsewhere so supreme a master of style, meaning to describe certain recording tablets, says, “They shall write, and deposit in the temples memorials of cypress wood”; 8 and again, “Then concerning walls, Megillus, I give my vote with Sparta that we should let them lie asleep within the ground, and not awaken them.”
— from On the Sublime by active 1st century Longinus

These resolutions are the first step in the school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind this picture I see a monster of social deformity.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

George Scherter, a minister of Saltzburg, was apprehended and committed to prison for instructing his flock in the knowledge of the gospel.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven silk ( ashiginu ), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff called shidori or shidzu , which is supposed by some to have been a striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a pair of tables or altars (called yo-kura-oki and ya-kura-oki ), a shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag's horns, a hoe, a few measures of saké or rice-beer, some haliotis and bonito, two measures of kituli (supposed to be salt roe), various kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a saké jar, and a few feet of matting for packing.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges.
— from Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

There is still another method of signaling, by the use of large fires kindled upon elevated points of the country.
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

If we were to trust to external differences alone, and give up the test of sterility, a multitude of species would have to be formed out of the varieties of these three species of Cucurbita.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication by Charles Darwin

we strake all our sailes and mended our ship.
— from The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 10 Asia, Part III by Richard Hakluyt

The divisions of Delaborde and Lahoussaye soon compelled Silveira to give ground: he displayed indeed a laudable prudence in refusing to let himself be caught and surrounded, and made off south-eastward towards Villa Real with 6,000 or 7,000 men.
— from A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809 From the Battle of Corunna to the End of the Talavera Campaign by Charles Oman

There is no sound to attract the ear, save the [45] measured tread of the caravan, the occasional " Isa! Isa! " of the drivers, the hasty wrench with which our camels snatch a mouthful of some ligneous plant that clings to the stony soil, the creaking of the baggage, or the whistling of the wind that comes moaning over the desert.
— from Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 Under the Orders and at the Expense of Her Majesty's Government by James Richardson

“I shall go forth upon the seas, A mast, or steering-beam; On me shall breathe the tropic breeze, Above, strange stars shall gleam.”
— from Children of Christmas, and Others by Edith Matilda Thomas

"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you take me out there."
— from Daisy Herself by Will E. Ingersoll