Moreover, he is a polished gentleman, a citizen of the world—yes, a true cosmopolite; for he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the globe, except our own forests, whither he is now going.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Says Pilling: “It is very probable that he was the translator of a number of books for which he is not given credit here, especially those portions of the Scripture which are herein not assigned to any name.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Chrysippus, though in other things as scornful a judge of the condition of animals as any other philosopher whatever, considering the motions of a dog, who coming to a place where three ways met, either to hunt after his master he has lost, or in pursuit of some game that flies before him, goes snuffing first in one of the ways, and then in another, and, after having made himself sure of two, without finding the trace of what he seeks, dashes into the third without examination, is forced to confess that this reasoning is in the dog: “I have traced my master to this place; he must of necessity be gone one of these three ways; he is not gone this way nor that, he must then infallibly be gone this other;” and that assuring himself by this conclusion, he makes no use of his nose in the third way, nor ever lays it to the ground, but suffers himself to be carried on there bv the force of reason.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

‘And,’ reasoned Ralph with himself, ‘if no good came of my uncle’s money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it after he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is saving it up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to the old gentleman, good did come of it to him too, for he had the pleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied and courted by all his family besides.’
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Kanang batáa mungáab dáyun kun dì tagáan sa gustu, That child yells right away when he is not given what he wants.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Here I sat and talked with them a good while and then parted, only Sir Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower; and I find him a very witty well-spoken fellow, and mighty free to tell his parentage, being a shoemaker’s son, to whom he is now going, and I to the ‘Change, where I hear how the French have taken two and sunk one of our merchant-men in the Streights, and carried the ships to Toulon; so that there is no expectation but we must fall out with them.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

To such a conception—love of evil for its own sake—the word Devil is limited in this work; Demon is applied to beings whose harmfulness is not gratuitous, but incidental to their own satisfactions.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

So, since the original separation of the metals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty where gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.
— from The Boy With the U.S. Miners by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

And though he said in ’32 that he could write, he is not going to say in ’54 that he is the best of all military writers.
— from The Romany Rye by George Borrow

As for this worm, why he is not guarding at all, for his presence Sullies both garden and fruit, till they deserve no defense.
— from Erotica Romana by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"True; which, however, is no guarantee that she is not at this moment cantering over Rushedge.
— from Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

This characteristic, which may be called mental prepossession, is well illustrated in the following narrative, the truth of which, however, is not guaranteed.
— from Fact and Fable in Psychology by Joseph Jastrow

The highest manifestation of this talker in regard [Pg 103] to men consists in bearing false witness against a neighbour; charging him with things of which he is not guilty: as in the case of those who said, “Naboth did blaspheme God and the king,” when he had not done so.
— from Talkers: With Illustrations by John Bate

Though Strindberg shows an understanding of love's miracles—with which he is not generally credited—he makes no attempt to endow the first meeting between Eric and the peasant girl who became the mother of his children, and finally his queen, with a greater transfiguring power than it possessed.
— from August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt: Studies and Impressions by L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby