In a few days the hides began to come slowly down, and we got into the old business of rolling goods up the hill, pitching hides down, and pulling our long league off and on.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Nevertheless, the theoretical knowledge, not indeed of these objects, but of reason generally, is so far enlarged by this, that by the practical postulates objects were given to those ideas, a merely problematical thought having by this means first acquired objective reality.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

The north façade of this one, built of reddish grey sandstone, is a wonderfully rich and finely wrought piece of ornamentation, and the seventeenth century pictures and wood carvings of the interior are curious if not beautiful specimens of the taste of the time.
— from South America: Observations and Impressions New edition corrected and revised by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

In order to understand, therefore, what a statute is, and why it has grown important to consider statute-making, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the meaning of the word law , and of the origin both of representative government and of legislatures, before we come to statutes, as we understand them; for parliaments existed centuries before they made statutes as we now use this word.
— from Popular Law-making A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute by Frederic Jesup Stimson

It was worth a lifetime to see it—to find down through all the débris of money-seeking, and all the strata of politics, this underlying, primary formation of loyalty—this unfaltering determination to vindicate the right of the majority, the only basis of republican government.
— from The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape by Albert D. (Albert Deane) Richardson

the old ballad of Robin Goodfellow :— "When house or hearth doth sluttish lie, I pinch the maids both black and blue"; and Ben Jonson's Entertainment at Althorpe , etc.
— from The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 by Robert Herrick

The old porter had smuggled more than one bale of rich goods ashore in his young days, for a captain who had a dislike of the customs, and he knew that his chance of safety lay not in speed, but in showing a cool indifference.
— from Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

Picket posts were generally within sight or hailing distance of each other; some had the protection of trees or bushes or rising ground, while others were out in the open fields without any protection or concealment.
— from Ten years in the ranks, U.S. Army by Augustus Meyers

Two oval bits of red glass, let into the wood, made the eyes of this lantern-devil.
— from Martin Hyde, the Duke's Messenger by John Masefield