Well, I thank heaven, I never yet was he That travell'd with my son, before sixteen, To shew him the Venetian courtezans; Nor read the grammar of cheating I had made, To my sharp boy, at twelve; repeating still The rule, Get money; still, get money, boy; No matter by what means; money will do More, boy, than my lord's letter.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

Where, in truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart?
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

As I went into the house, I noticed signs in the sky which betokened a break in the weather for the better.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

So to our coach, and through Mr. Minnes’s wood, and looked upon Mr. Evelyn’s house; and so over the common, and through Epsum towne to our inne, in the way stopping a poor woman with her milk-pail, and in one of my gilt tumblers did drink our bellyfulls of milk, better than any creame; and so to our inne, and there had a dish of creame, but it was sour, and so had no pleasure in it; and so paid our reckoning, and took coach, it being about seven at night, and passed and saw the people walking with their wives and children to take the ayre, and we set out for home, the sun by and by going down, and we in the cool of the evening all the way with much pleasure home, talking and pleasing ourselves with the pleasure of this day’s work, Mrs. Turner mightily pleased with my resolution, which, I tell her, is never to keep a country-house, but to keep a coach, and with my wife on the Saturday to go sometimes for a day to this place, and then quit to another place; and there is more variety and as little charge, and no trouble, as there is in a country-house.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

It disappointed great hopes, it baffled great plans, and dispelled for a season the conviction that, it is believed, had been long maturing in his grace’s mind; that he was the man of the age, that his military career had been only a preparation for a civil course not less illustrious; and that it was reserved for him to control for the rest of his life undisputed the destinies of a country, which was indebted to him in no slight degree for its European pre-eminence.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

So to our coach, and through Mr. Minnes's wood, and looked upon Mr. Evelyn's house; and so over the common, and through Epsum towne to our inne, in the way stopping a poor woman with her milk-pail, and in one of my gilt tumblers did drink our bellyfulls of milk, better than any creame; and so to our inne, and there had a dish of creame, but it was sour, and so had no pleasure in it; and so paid our reckoning, and took coach, it being about seven at night, and passed and saw the people walking with their wives and children to take the ayre, and we set out for home, the sun by and by going down, and we in the cool of the evening all the way with much pleasure home, talking and pleasing ourselves with the pleasure of this day's work, Mrs. Turner mightily pleased with my resolution, which, I tell her, is never to keep a country-house, but to keep a coach, and with my wife on the Saturday to go sometimes for a day to this place, and then quit to another place; and there is more variety and as little charge, and no trouble, as there is in a country-house.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 55: July 1667 by Samuel Pepys

If you are clean and whole, that's enough; have boots with elastics at the side, instead of those long mile Balmorals that take so long to "lace up,"—in short, simplify your dressing , and then stop every wheel in the house if necessary in order to go out, but go; fifteen minutes is better than nothing; if you can't get out in the day-time, run out in the evening; and if your husband can't see the necessity of it, perhaps he will on reflection after you have gone out.
— from Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern by Fanny Fern

Ill-weighed Polo sticks make the situation worse if the horse is not so kept.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 by Various

she continued, reproachfully "Thanks to you, in whom I trusted, have I not fallen into their hands again?" "Oh!"
— from The Pirates of the Prairies: Adventures in the American Desert by Gustave Aimard

She still has that way of poising herself for flight, like a tit on a thistle, or a plume of dandelion-down, ready to break off and float away on any wind, which I tell her is not respectable in a married woman of her age and standing.
— from The Dew of Their Youth by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

He was horribly depressed when I told him it not only could be, but was.
— from Many Kingdoms by Elizabeth Garver Jordan

Our author had both matter and form to provide; for, except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and, perhaps, not many in other modern languages, which showed life in its native colours.
— from The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 05 Miscellaneous Pieces by Samuel Johnson

But the wonder is that he is not disturbed by this treatment.
— from Under Sail by Lincoln Colcord

Yet I do not know whether illness to him is not rather a prerogative than an evil.
— from Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1 by George Otto Trevelyan