“If I were rich,” he said, as he changed the five-franc piece he had brought with him in case anything might happen, “I would take a cab, then I could think at my ease.”
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

From Antioch men go to a city that is called Lacuth, and then to Gebel, and then to Tortouse.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

From that city men go to another city that is clept Gethe, that is a journey from the sea that men clepe the Gravelly Sea.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

And the merchants pass by the kingdom of Persia, and go to a city that is Clept Hermes, for Hermes the philosopher founded it.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

And after that they pass an arm of the sea, and then they go to another city that is clept Golbache.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

The defect of science is that it is inadequate or abstract, that the account it gives of things is not full and sensuous enough; but its merit is that, like sense, it makes external being present to a creature that is concerned in adjusting itself to its environment, and informs that creature about things other than itself.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

If, therefore, we wanted to get 356, we may know at once to a certainty that it can only be obtained (if at all) by dropping the 8.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut, And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar, These I compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits, Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me, Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each; But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve, I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

I was again sold, and carried through a number of places, till, after travelling a considerable time, I came to a town called Tinmah, in the most beautiful country I have yet seen in Africa.
— from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African Written By Himself by Olaudah Equiano

Is there any claim that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery?
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Was there a chance that, in condemning Withers, they would destroy his reputation for brilliant work?
— from The Winning Clue by James Hay

We believe that a church that is capable of a genuine revival, could modulate into daily meetings, criticism, and all the self-denials of Communism, far more easily than any gathering by general proclamation for the sole purpose of founding a Community.
— from History of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes

There were others who believed that no one but himself could hold the Irish party together and carry the Irish cause to triumph.
— from Studies in Contemporary Biography by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

In what hamlet hereabout dwells there a cobbler?" "There is crooked Peter at Neufess, and Hackspann at Reichelstorf," was the answer.
— from Margery (Gred): A Tale Of Old Nuremberg — Volume 07 by Georg Ebers

“If the prepuce is lax, its mobility produces an irritation to the highly irritable and sensitive nervous system of the child by the titillation in its movements on the glans; if too tight and constricted, then it compresses the glans, and by its irritation it leads the child to seize the organ.”
— from History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance by P. C. (Peter Charles) Remondino

In the next two years I worked at every trade and calling that I could lay my hands to.
— from Under Sail by Felix Riesenberg

Was there a chance that I could still keep on, that through his assistance I could find a decently paid occupation?
— from This House to Let by William Le Queux