'In vain I rail at Opportunity, At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night; In vain I cavil with mine infamy, In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite: This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Your white companion has his routine way of treating the natives, and he neither understands, nor is very much concerned with the manner in which you, as an ethnographer, will have to approach them.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

[6612] Magillianus the Jesuit will not admit of conference with a heretic, but severity and rigour to be used, non illis verba reddere, sed furcas, figere oportet ; and Theodosius is commended in Nicephorus, lib.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Ita attenuatus fuit jejunio et vigiliis, in tantum exeso corpora ut ossibus vix haerebat, undo nocte infantum vagitus, balatus pecorum, mugitus boum, voces et ludibria daemonum, &c. 6459 .
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 171: “ Malum auctum est, quo Vormaciæ laborabam: durissima patior excrementa, ut nunquam in vita, ut remedium desperaverim .” To Spalatin, June 10, 1521.
— from Luther, vol. 2 of 6 by Hartmann Grisar

The honour’s great to us, John Bright, to serve so great a man; We cringe, and worship your great name as humbly as we can— But let us not in vain, great man, your ample pocket sue, For we all think it very hard, John Bright, to pay for you.
— from The Curiosities of Dudley and the Black Country, From 1800 to 1860 Also an Account of the Trials and Sufferings of Dud Dudley, with His Mettallum Martis: Etc. by C. F. G. Clark

[Pg 143] who has given them to you; care for them, cherish them tenderly, and bring them up not in vanity, but faithfully in the fear of God.
— from Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal by Chantal, Jeanne-Françoise de, Saint

“An utter absence of national feeling”; “an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism”; “although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of society,” with the notion “that the elevation of the blacks will be the degradation of the whites”; “the practice of corporal punishment is still continued to a great extent”; “the habit is so inveterate with a great many persons as to render, on the least provocation, the impulse to whip a negro almost irresistible”; “the maiming and killing of colored men seems to be looked upon by many as one of those venial offences which must be forgiven to the outraged feelings of a wronged and robbed people”; “the number of murders and assaults perpetrated upon negroes is very great”: these are words of General Schurz.
— from Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 13 (of 20) by Charles Sumner

My unkle Neddy is very comfortable, has very little pain, & know fever with his broken bone.
— from Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl of 1771 by Anna Green Winslow

Money , useless to the savage who understands not its value, is amassed by the miser, for fear it should be employed uselessly; lest it should be squandered by the prodigal; or dissipated by the voluptuary; who make no other use of it than to purchase infirmities; to buy regret.
— from The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1 by Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'

"An unlucky number," I venture, hoping to arouse an opinion.
— from The Woman Who Toils Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls by Van Vorst, John, Mrs.

“As the deeds of the said girls not only brought discredit on all of us, but their association gives our married women also an opportunity to contract bad habits, and, as all of our castemen thought it good to give up henceforth the custom of leaving girls unmarried now in vogue, all of us convened a public meeting in the Tenali village, considered carefully the pros and cons , and entered into the agreement herein mentioned.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 2 of 7 by Edgar Thurston