The medium between these two extremes marks out the well-bred man; he feels himself firm and easy in all companies; is modest without being bashful, and steady without being impudent; if he is a stranger, he observes, with care, the manners and ways of the people most esteemed at that place, and conforms to them with complaisance.”
— from The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards Society by Cecil B. Hartley

With no small wonder he received his master's commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

I—I sit here overcome with grief and bemoan the joys of a fleeting life.”
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the disguise of Lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper vein of irony than usual.
— from Phaedrus by Plato

There was the cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his own wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, and as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Let us but hold up our sticks, and threaten to break those coloured lamps that surround the Orchestra, and we shall soon have our wishes gratified.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

" "That is very strange," said Dorothy, "but we must try, in some way, to see him, or we shall have made our journey for nothing.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

The works of Buonamico, then, finding much favour with the Pisans, he was charged by the Warden of the Works of the Campo Santo to make [Pg 146] four scenes in fresco, from the beginning of the world up to the construction of Noah's Ark, and round the scenes an ornamental border, wherein he made his own portrait from the life—namely, in a frieze, in the middle of which, and on the corners, are some heads, among which, as I have said, is seen his own, with a cap exactly like the one that is seen above.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

Upon the shelving hillside on which I was lying, a sort of encampment was established.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844 by Various

The doctor knew men, and he was able to show her how utterly innocent she was of the slightest hint of wrong in her relations with Matthew, how impossible that her spontaneous act could have wrought a second's harm to any good man.
— from Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness by Robert S. (Robert Sproul) Carroll

[1306] Of the consequences of the new teaching levelled at the meritorious nature of good works, Wicel had said at the end of his “ Apologia ”: “The Lutheran sect has opened wide the flood-gates to immorality and disorder, so that everybody laments and sighs over it.
— from Luther, vol. 4 of 6 by Hartmann Grisar

I believe that the central and highest peaks form parts of the rim of a great crater, the southern half of which has been entirely removed by the waves of the sea: there is, moreover, an external wall of black basaltic rocks, like the coast-mountains of Mauritius, which are older than the central volcanic streams.
— from Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage Round the World of H.M.S. Beagle Under the Command of Captain Fitz Roy, R.N. by Charles Darwin

It would be necessary to put something in the girl's mouth—Leon suggested his old woollen head-gear which the bear had chewed up—until her friends were ambushed, as otherwise she might give the alarm.
— from The Rising of the Red Man A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion by John Mackie

[248] There is, it should be added, a very strange story of the Princess having got an introduction to Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena, of which affair the following account appeared in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal , September 13th, 1817:— "A letter from Sir Hudson Lowe, lately received from St. Helena, forms at present the leading topic of conversation in the higher circles.
— from English Eccentrics and Eccentricities by John Timbs

EVIL SPIRIT HOW otherwise was it, Margaret, When thou, still innocent, Here to the altar cam'st, And from the worn and fingered book Thy prayers didst prattle, Half sport of childhood, Half God within thee!
— from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How wonderful was the instinct by which this little creature, who so seldom heard one word of parental severity or parental fondness, yet knew so thoroughly the language of both!
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various