—The devil take the serious character of these people! quoth I—(aside) they understand no more of Irony than this— The comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but something seal'd up my lips—I could not pronounce the name— Sir, said I, collecting myself—it is not my intention to take post— —
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

For whatever may be the case, with regard to all kinds of vice and virtue, it is certain, that rights, and obligations, and property, admit of no such insensible gradation, but that a man either has a full and perfect property, or none at all; and is either entirely obliged to perform any action, or lies under no manner of obligation.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

[37] officio, ut nihil magis officio possit esse contrarium.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero

We will pick up no more oysters.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

After satisfying ourselves that these singular caverns afforded us no means of escape from our prison, we made our way back, dejected and dispirited, to the summit of the hill.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

He has been my bubble these twenty years, and to my certain knowledge, understands no more of his own affairs than a child in swaddling clothes.
— from The History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot

He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish—perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

Up, and by water to White Hall, and there walked with Creed in the Matted gallery till by and by a Committee for Tangier met: the Duke of York there; and there I did discourse over to them their condition as to money, which they were all mightily, as I could desire, satisfied with, but the Duke of Albemarle, who takes the part of the Guards against us in our supplies of money, which is an odd consideration for a dull, heavy blockhead as he is, understanding no more of either than a goose: but the ability and integrity of Sir W. Coventry, in all the King’s concernments, I do and must admire.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

As soon as this was done, the boat was pulled a long distance off from the land, paying out the ropes first from the launch, and then from the boat itself, until no more of the latter remained.
— from Homeward Bound; Or, the Chase: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper

because] of His high endless life [in our Substance]; and this is that fair sweet doom that was shewed in all the fair Revelation, in which I saw Him assign to us no manner of blame.
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

Unfortunately not much of the correspondence between the two has come down to us, as Lund destroyed most of the General's letters.
— from George Washington: Farmer Being an Account of His Home Life and Agricultural Activities by Paul Leland Haworth

What’s the use o’ tryin’ to lick the blackguards when it’ll do us no manner o’ good?”
— from The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

of the after-dinner speeches of the ages had gone unspoken, no man of the right, forward-looking, upstanding sort, whether his speeches be good, bad, or, like the most of them, merely indifferent, may wilfully or comfortably permit a promise of that nature to go to protest.
— from From Pillar to Post: Leaves from a Lecturer's Note-Book by John Kendrick Bangs

Man is the last and fullest expression of God’s thought, for in man and man’s history God finds room for the utterance not merely of His wisdom and power, but of what is most profoundly spiritual and moral in His nature.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I by Marcus Dods

In addition to the use now made of the newspaper by the classes called "advertisers," I expect it to become the handy medium of the entire public, the means of ready communication in regard to all wants and exchanges.
— from The American Newspaper by Charles Dudley Warner

No use; no mit of his could ever stop the frightful velocity of that shoot.
— from The Eternal Boy: Being the Story of the Prodigious Hickey by Owen Johnson