Sed nun mi havas du aŭ tri minutojn da libera tempo, kaj mi tuj ekkaptas la okazon por skribi letereton, petante ke vi vespermanĝu kun mi hodiaŭ vespere, ĉe la hotelo kie, kiel vi vidas, mi loĝas de antaŭ unu tago.
— from A Complete Grammar of Esperanto by Ivy Kellerman Reed

The Grand Duke's contempt for money showed itself in sudden outbursts against the squeeze; and while the catering at the Court functions reached the extreme limits of permissible simplicity, while at the supper at the close of the Thursday concerts in the Marble Hall nothing but continual roast beef with sauce remoulade and ice-pudding were served on the red velvet coverings of the gilt-legged tables, while the daily fare at the Grand Duke's own candle-decked table was no better than that of an ordinary middle-class family, he defiantly threw away a whole year's income on the repair of the Grimmburg.
— from Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

Ah! why can it not suffice to satisfy the eternal longings of poor suffering men?”
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Complete by Émile Zola

Foreigners threw it in their teeth that Florence, the city glorious of art and freedom, was become a stable for mules— stalla da muli , in the expressive language of popular sarcasm.
— from Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III by John Addington Symonds

The legendary grandeur of this city continued, long after it had ceased to be distinguished for wealth and power, imperishably recorded both in the minds of the nobler citizens and in the compositions of the poets; the emphatic language of Pausanias shows how much he found concerning it in the old epic.
— from History of Greece, Volume 01 (of 12) by George Grote

Thus, in the early laughter of pleasure, some solid advantage or gratification, present or future, was always in view, and from men being delighted at their own success, which must often have been obtained at the expense of others, it was an easy transition to rejoice at the failure of rivals.
— from History of English Humour, Vol. 1 With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour by A. G. K. (Alfred Guy Kingan) L'Estrange

We have set ourselves with all the capacity and energy at our disposal to create a world-wide common fund of ideas and knowledge, and to evoke a world-wide sense of human solidarity in which the existing limitations of political structure must inevitably melt away.
— from The Passionate Friends by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

I intended going to see at Stuttgart a former member of the Austrian Cabinet, Albert Schüffle, who now devotes all his time to the study of social questions, and has published some very well-known works—among others, “Capitalismus und Socialismus,” and “Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers” (“Construction and Life of the Social Body”), books which place him at the extreme left of Professorial Socialism.
— from Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, January 1885 by Various