Perhaps I might also say, that I know a little of the world; but that is to no purpose,—though you be gentle, and I simple, it does not follow, but that I who am simple may do a good office to you who are gentle.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

A till is more modernly called a “lob,” and stealing from tills is known as “lob-sneaking.”
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and long prevailed among the old men there.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

I have the intention of extending my arm; taking it for granted that I know as little of the physiology of the human body and of the mechanical laws of its movements as the man in the street, what could there be more vague, more bloodless, more uncertain than this intention compared with what follows it?
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Now, in the relation of a natural being to similar beings in the same habitat there is just the occasion we require for introducing a miraculous transcendence in knowledge, a leap out of solipsism which, though not prompted by reason, will find in reason a continual justification.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

"When I have one of my own, I hope it will be as happy as the three I know and love the best.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

There were the things I knew and loved.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Before sunset the tiger returned to its kill, and leapt upon the corpse, whereupon the husband stabbed it to the heart, so that the points of the daggers met, and killed it on the spot.”
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

"I think I know at last exactly what I shall feel like on the resurrection morning.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Before Laurier left Montreal to take up his residence in the Townships, he was a prominent member of the institution known as L’Institut Canadian, which in time came under the episcopal condemnation of the late Mgr. Ignace Bourget, Bishop of Montreal, and became very prominently before the public by the death of Guibord, a well-known Montreal printer, and the subsequent refusal of the head of the diocese to allow his internment in the family lot at Côté des Neiges.
— from Sir Wilfrid Laurier by Peter McArthur

'Beyond that, I know as little as you, Richie, though indubitably I hoped to intimidate them.
— from The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Volume 6 by George Meredith

This is known as "La Friponne," or "The Cheat," after the parent one at Quebec.
— from Montreal, 1535-1914. Vol. 1. Under the French Régime, 1535-1760 by William H. (William Henry) Atherton

But a few moments sufficed in which to realize that, for all my training, I knew as little of chemistry—of chemistry as understood by this man’s genius—as a junior student in surgery knows of trephining.
— from The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

But I would not go in, till I knew a little of his mind whether he would receive so dangerous a guest as me, and therefore stayed in a field, under a hedge, by a great tree.
— from Wonderful Escapes by Frédéric Bernard

I thought I knew at least one thing to preach.
— from Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made by James Dabney McCabe

I really think that he is, on the whole, the youngest-looking man of fifty that I know, at least when he is animated.
— from Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1 by George Otto Trevelyan

I may tell you that I knew a loving married couple who ceased to love each other, he because her hair turned white, and she because his turned outwards.
— from Her Royal Highness Woman by Max O'Rell

And then I knew at last...
— from The Secret Victory by Stephen McKenna