This stitch admits of every sort of modification, such as, for instance, making the third row of stitches on the buttonhole stitches, in the middle of the ones on the small loop; or making one row of close stitches first, and then three open rows; in the former case you should always make an uneven number of buttonhole stitches, so that you have the same number on both sides of the needle, which you must put in between the two threads that form the middle buttonhole stitch.
— from Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont

"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

This possessed the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had extraordinary business that obliged them to it This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Andrew's, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each, few more or less; but from the time that the plague first began in St Giles's parish, it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in number considerably.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

And Aristotle says, in his treatise on Beans, that Pythagoras enjoined his disciples to abstain from beans, either because [352] they resemble some part of the human body, or because they are like the gates of hell (for they are the only plants without parts); or because they dry up other plants, or because they are representatives of universal nature, or because they are used in elections in oligarchical governments.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

In the afternoon to my Lord Treasurer’s, and there got my Lord Treasurer to sign the warrant for my striking of tallys, and so doing many jobbs in my way home, and there late writeing letters, being troubled in my mind to hear that Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes do take notice that I am now-a-days much from the office upon no office business, which vexes me, and will make me mind my business the better, I hope in God; but what troubles me more is, that I do omit to write, as I should do, to Mr. Coventry, which I must not do, though this night I minded it so little as to sleep in the middle of my letter to him, and committed forty blotts and blurrs in my letter to him, but of this I hope never more to be guilty, if I have not already given him sufficient offence.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Many other tricks she used besides this (as she there confesseth), for she would fall out with, and anger him of set purpose, pick quarrels upon no occasion, because she would be reconciled to him again.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Their eldest son was Henry, who was born on April 22, 1707, and had an uncertain number of brothers and sisters of the whole blood.
— from Joseph Andrews, Vol. 1 by Henry Fielding

The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts.
— from Gorgias by Plato

When these began to be printed in 1629, dysentery appeared in them under the unambiguous name of bloody flux; there were 449 deaths from that cause in 1629, they had decreased to 165 in 1669 (a year remarkable for dysentery and other forms of bowel-complaint), and to 20 in the year 1690, soon after which the article of bloody flux ceased in the bills.
— from A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2) From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time by Charles Creighton

The offering remained untouched, no one being bold enough to disturb the sacred token.
— from The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 2, Civilized Nations The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 2 by Hubert Howe Bancroft

The good countess received her with a cordial welcome, as if she had been her son’s own choice and a lady of a high degree, and she spoke kind words to comfort her for the unkind neglect of Bertram in sending his wife home on her bridal day alone.
— from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb

"Though the work has been arduous, because of the unparalleled necessity of building three great churches, two of them destroyed by fire, the field has been delightful and blessed by God.
— from T. De Witt Talmage as I Knew Him by Eleanor McCutcheon Talmage

God has laid himself under no obligation , by any promise, to keep any natural man out of hell one moment.
— from Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards by Jonathan Edwards

The golden opinions of Tom Paine could not be transfused into the Chinese language; and these unfortunate people understood no other but their own; so that three hundred and thirty-three millions were doomed to remain in ignorance and misery on account of their language being incapable of conveying the enlightened doctrines of Tom Paine .
— from Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton by Barrow, John, Sir

Besides, the doctor himself is well accustomed to the life he will have to lead; and enters upon it, not with the vague and uncertain notions of Back and Franklin, but with a pretty correct apprehension of the probable routine of procedure, and the experience of a great many years spent in the service of the Hudson Bay Company (see note 1).
— from Hudson Bay by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

Note 16 ( return ) [ I have ventured to call it unique; not only because I know no work of the kind in our language, (if we except a few chapters of the old translation of Froissart)—none, which uniting the charms of romance and history, keeps the imagination so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for after reflection; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is a compilation, which, in the various excellencies of translation, selection, and arrangement, required and proves greater genius in the compiler, as living in the present state of society, than in the original composers.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The result was that, as is usually the case under similar circumstances, people, seeing that the individual attacked took no notice of what was said, thought they had better take the same course, and the reports dropped gradually out of circulation, until no one believed them at all.
— from River Legends; Or, Father Thames and Father Rhine by Brabourne, Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen, Baron