If they tell more fibs than their downright neighbours across the water, on the other hand they believe more; and I made myself in a single week such a reputation in Dublin as would take a man ten years and a mint of money to acquire in London.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

I do not therefore think that an important objection to Rational Egoism can be based upon its incompatibility with this particular consciousness: nor that the common experience of mankind really sustains the view that the desire of one’s own happiness, if accepted as supreme and regulative, inevitably defeats its own aim through the consequent diminution and desiccation of the impulses and emotional capacities necessary to the attainment of happiness in a high degree; though it certainly shows a serious and subtle danger in this direction.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

‘I know you’ll excuse me, Nicholas, my dear, but I don’t like to do this before a third person; indeed, before a young man it would not be quite proper, though really, after all, I don’t know what harm there is in it, except that to be sure it’s not a very becoming thing, though some people say it is very much so, and really I don’t know why it should not be, if it’s well got up, and the borders are small-plaited; of course, a good deal depends upon that.’
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

DEBT Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt.
— from The Art of Money Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum

In Upper Lusatia the figure of Death, made of straw and rags, is dressed in a veil furnished by the last bride and a shirt provided by the house in which the last death took place.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

[6170] This is the cruel wound against whose smart, No liquor's force prevails, or any plaister, No skill of stars, no depth of magic art, Devised by that great clerk Zoroaster, A wound that so infects the soul and heart, As all our sense and reason it doth master; A wound whose pang and torment is so durable, As it may rightly called be incurable.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Death stared him in the face unless his soul could be induced to speed at once across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

There were three verses in the solo, and really, I do not know as the audience were to blame for applauding.
— from A Little Girl in Old New York by Amanda M. Douglas

Lawrence shook his head smilingly, and replied, “I don’t think it would be hard.”
— from Trumps by George William Curtis

And so long as this movement is possible, so long, that is to say, as retrospective imagination detects the common element, which we may specifically call the recurring consciousness of self, so long is there the undisturbed assurance of personal identity.
— from Illusions: A Psychological Study by James Sully

It is an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the upper Columbia lakes, and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass, it seems lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges it drains.
— from Steep Trails California, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, the Grand Canyon by John Muir

and that he was slovenly and regardless in dress.'
— from Home Life of Great Authors by Hattie Tyng Griswold

After some time, Mary Anna proposed that the boys should go up to the wood-pile and get a short log of wood, which had one end sawed off square, and roll it down to the mole.
— from Caleb in the Country by Jacob Abbott

She has had no teeth This twenty years, and the next violent cough Brings up her tongue, it cannot possibly Be sound at root, I doe not thinke but one Strong sneeze upon her, and well mean't would make Her quarters fall away, one kicke would blow Her up like gunpowder, and loose all her limbs; She is so cold, an Incubus wod not heate her, Her phlegme would quench a furnace, and her breath Would dampe a musket bullet.
— from The Lady of Pleasure A Comedie, as It Was Acted by Her Majesties Servants, at the Private House in Drury Lane by James Shirley

THE ESOPHAGUS A few of the anatomical details must be kept especially in mind when it is desired to introduce straight and rigid instruments down the lumen of the gullet.
— from Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery by Chevalier Jackson