' Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission; the Jew remaining silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired; and presently returned, ushering in Nancy; who was decorated with the bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key, complete.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

And when Hyrcanus had taken that city, which was not done till after a year's siege, he was not contented with doing that only, but he demolished it entirely, and brought rivulets to it to drown it, for he dug such hollows as might let the water run under it; nay, he took away the very marks that there had ever been such a city there.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

There is no difficulty in finding work—profitable work—work that is really urgently, imperatively needed—the building of a home-city, and, as men hasten to build up this and the other towns which must inevitably follow its construction, the migration to the towns—the old, crowded, chaotic slum-towns of the past—will be effectually checked, and the current of population set in precisely the opposite direction—to the new towns, bright and fair, wholesome and beautiful.
— from Garden Cities of To-Morrow Being the Second Edition of "To-Morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform" by Howard, Ebenezer, Sir

But in one way only will I punish this ignorant town, and that is by not raining upon it, nor on any part of its district or territory, for three whole years, to be reckoned from the day and moment when this threat is pronounced.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

My objection is, first, that in any sense this rule is applicable only to certain classes of poetry; secondly, that even to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense, as hath never by any one (as far as I know or have read,) been denied or doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it is practicable, it is yet as a rule useless, if not injurious, and therefore either need not, or ought not to be practised.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Either their Minds are wholly fixed on some particular Science, which is often the Case of Mathematicians and other learned Men; or are wholly taken up with some Violent Passion, such as Anger, Fear, or Love, which ties the Mind to some distant Object; or, lastly, these Distractions proceed from a certain Vivacity and Fickleness in a Man's Temper, which while it raises up infinite Numbers of Ideas in the Mind, is continually pushing it on, without allowing it to rest on any particular Image.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

The principle of interest rightly understood is not a lofty one, but it is clear and sure.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

v [A1; c1] do s.t. with restraint (usually in negative sentences).
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

I know, like one of Whitefield's disciples—that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument—as to make all reasoning upon it needless.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Whereupon Master Bruton and the master of his ship, with others of their company, made great haste towards us, and brought our musicians with them from our ship, purposing either by force to rescue us, if needs should so require, or with courtesy to allure the people.
— from Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage by Richard Hakluyt

That this mountain-land remains unexplored is not to be wondered at, for the country is so far away, and so difficult to get at, from any human habitation [Pg 150] that it takes weeks of hard work battling with the rivers and forests before even the valleys are reached which lie at the bottom of these ranges of snow-and glacier-covered mountains.
— from Climbing on the Himalaya and Other Mountain Ranges by Norman Collie

His famous ride remained unsung, if not unhonored for eighty-eight years, or until Longfellow, in 1863 made it the text for his Landlord's Tale in the Wayside Inn.
— from The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution by James Henry Stark

“Yes,” cried Herbert, for he felt that he was in a difficulty, and there was no way out save the bold one, of right through it; “yes, she saw what you did not, that Hemsworth had dared to lift his eyes to you——that all his displays of patriotic sentiment were got up to attract your favourable notice, and that in his arguments with Frederick about Ireland, his whole aim was to expose the Guardsman's ignorance, and throw ridicule upon it, neither seeking to convey sound notions, nor combat erroneous impressions.” “Captain Travers was but too easy a mark for such weapons,” said Kate, angrily, “It was his pleasure to make Ireland the object of his sarcasm.”
— from The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago by Charles James Lever

If nature happens to present us with instances sufficiently varied in their circumstances, and if we are able to discover, either among the proximate antecedents or among some other order of antecedents, something which is always found when the effect is found, however various the circumstances, and never found when it is not; we may discover, by mere observation without experiment, a real uniformity in nature.
— from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2) by John Stuart Mill

He undertook to prove that it was generated in treachery, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, and unprovoked murder.—He offered to make out that those who have led in that business had conducted themselves with the utmost perfidy to their colleagues in function, and with the most flagrant perjury both towards their king and their constituents: to the one of whom the Assembly had sworn fealty; and to the other, when under no sort of violence or constraint, they had sworn a full obedience to instructions.—That, by the terror of assassination, they had driven away a very great number of the members, so as to produce a false appearance of a majority.—That this fictitious majority had fabricated a Constitution, which, as now it stands, is a tyranny far beyond any example that can be found in the civilized European world of our age; that therefore the lovers of it must be lovers, not of liberty, but, if they really understand its nature, of the lowest and basest of all servitude.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

But his bureau drawers were full of the blue stockings rolled up in neat little hard balls—all the balls he ever had; the tears used to spring up in his eyes every time he looked at them.
— from The Pot of Gold, and Other Stories by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

We shall ride upon its neck as if it w-w-were an ass!
— from The Redemption of David Corson by Charles Frederic Goss

"Mr. Herts," replied Ryder unmoved, "I never allow sentiment to interfere with business.
— from The Lion and the Mouse; a Story of an American Life by Arthur Hornblow