One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay.
— from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

For when any one of the three classes becomes puffed up, and manifests an inclination to be contentious and unduly encroaching, the mutual interdependency of all the three, and the possibility of the pretensions of any one being checked and thwarted by the others, must plainly check this tendency: and so the proper equilibrium is maintained by the impulsiveness of the one part being checked by its fear of the other....
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

Well, we know that one essential form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living person as a kind of jointed dancing-doll, and that frequently, with the object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two or more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one another by invisible strings.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

Was forced to send my excuse to the Duke of York for my not attending him with my fellows this day because of my cold, and was the less troubled because I was thereby out of the way to offer my proposals about Pursers till the Surveyor hath delivered his notions, which he is to do to-day about something he has to offer relating to the Navy in general, which I would be glad to see and peruse before I offer what I have to say.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

“ Orang petapa’an ” and “ orang Katapang ” are the two readings, and the ease with which the one might pass into the other, possibly through a medial form “orang katapa’an,” will be readily admitted by students of Malay, especially when the general family resemblance of this version to other versions of the same charm is taken into consideration.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

Then bring me to their sights; I'll bear thy blame, And take thy office from thee on my peril.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

A blind will, "eyes without hands," would go a very little way; and perchance his abstract reason, that should concentrate the scattered beams of her practical reason, may be employed in judging of the flavour of wine, discanting on the sauces most proper for turtle; or, more profoundly intent at a card-table, he may be generalizing his ideas as he bets away his fortune, leaving all the minutiae of education to his helpmate or chance.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

There is no more awful story of the Gardens than this of Marmaduke Perry, who had been Mary-Annish three days in succession, and was sentenced to appear in the Broad Walk dressed in his sister's clothes.
— from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

From the days of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,—through the quarto Ross and Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock, you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,—to
— from If, Yes and Perhaps Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact by Edward Everett Hale

I trust that Mrs. Clarke is well; I have never had the honour of presentation, but I have heard so much of her in many quarters, that any notice she is pleased to take of my productions is not less gratifying than my thanks are sincere, both to her and you; by all accounts I may safely congratulate you on the possession of "a bride" whose mental and personal accomplishments are more than poetical.
— from The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

Stepping aside he let the old man pass.
— from Creatures That Once Were Men by Maksim Gorky

Down in a near-by market is a little florist's shop, so small that one might pass twenty times without noticing it; the man, a local authority, who has kept it for years, makes a specialty of the great long-stemmed single violets, whose fleeting fragrance no words may express.
— from People of the Whirlpool From The Experience Book of a Commuter's Wife by Mabel Osgood Wright

Rocky went to the Astor House, across Soochow Creek, which was still, in 1911, a famous stopping place for the tourists, diplomats, military and commercial men, and all the other more prosperous among the white travelers that pour into Shanghai from everywhere else in the world by the great ships that plow unceasingly the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Yellow and China Seas; to pour out again (in peaceful times) from Shanghai by rail and by lesser craft of the river and the coast to Hong Kong and Manila to Hankow, to Tientsin and Peking, to Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohoma and Tokio.... and Shanghai had never been so crowded as now, with its thousands of travelers detained, awaiting news from this or that revolutionary center; with the American Marines and the British and German sailors; with Manchu refugees swarming into the foreign settlements; with revolutionists, queueless, wearing unaccustomed European dress, parading everywhere.
— from In Red and Gold by Samuel Merwin

By the advice of the Athenians a numerous embassy of the Ætolians came speedily from Hypata, and the discourse of Africanus, whom they addressed first, augmented their hopes of peace; for he mentioned, that “many nations and states, first in Spain, and afterwards in Africa, had thrown themselves on his protection; and that, in all of them, he had left greater monuments of clemency and kindness than of military prowess.”
— from The History of Rome, Books 37 to the End with the Epitomes and Fragments of the Lost Books by Livy

" "Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope.
— from Bulldog Carney by William Alexander Fraser

And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place.
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 4 by Burton Egbert Stevenson