“I say, though,” Pyotr Stepanovitch fired off suddenly, while he still went on eating, “what about our business?
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A young chief himself would have to pay substantially for establishing his position in the Kula, for a chief is always the son of a woman of high rank, and the nephew of a chief, though his father may be a commoner of small influence only.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics?
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

But let the Proclamation speak for itself.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Many men and women were passing to and fro, and Tommy, with a wild exultation in his breast, peered up at the face of this one and that; but no, they were only ordinary people, and he played rub-a-dub with his feet on the pavement, so furious was he with them for moving on as if nothing had happened.
— from Sentimental Tommy The Story of His Boyhood by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

I have only been able to preserve some few of the vernacular idiosyncrasies in the notes, for the benefit of those who take an interest in the people’s characteristic utterances.
— from Roman Legends: A collection of the fables and folk-lore of Rome by Rachel Harriette Busk

you hope we to be able to reveal many an attractive feature, and you shall behold many a scene, as we venture to predict, snatched fresh and living from the heart of this existence.
— from The Student-Life of Germany by William Howitt

Classes aped the habits of the classes above their own, and the love of luxurious gratification "reached to the dregs of the people," says Fielding, "who, not being able by the fruits of honest labour to support the state which they affect, they disdain the wages to which their industry would entitle them, and abandoning themselves to idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited betake themselves to a state of starving and beggary, while those of more art and courage became thieves, sharpers, and robbers."
— from Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1 From the twelfth to the eighteenth century by Arthur Griffiths

Sometimes the patient suffers for weeks.”
— from Left Half Harmon by Ralph Henry Barbour

Then the whip fell more heavily on the poor horse, and the screams of mortal fear rang out more startlingly clear; but the fearful scourge had rendered the streets almost deserted, and the ghostly form still clung to the affrighted negro, sometimes sinking as if from exhaustion, upon its knees, sometimes again drawing itself upon its feet; but holding ever on with the pale shroud floating backward in the wind.
— from The Brother Clerks A Tale of New-Orleans by Mary Ashley Townsend

Cradock was most anxious to prevent Spee from coming round the Horn to raid the east coast, and he feared that if he kept the old 12-knot battleship with him he might be too late to bar the enemy's passage.
— from Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War by John Buchan