Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying ina mean†it is a mean between twovices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.2, ch.6,1006 (translated by Sir David Ross).

Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.

-Austen,Jane
  Of Mrs Bennet. Pride and Prejudice, ch.1.

I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Acts of the  Apostles 21:39.

'Then you should say what you mean,'the March Hare went on. 'Ido,'Alicehastily replied; 'at leastöat least Imeanwhat I sayöthat's the same thing, you know.' 'Not the same thing a bit! 'said the Hatter.'Why, you might just as well say that ''I see what I eat'' is the same thing as ''I eat what I see!'''

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.7, 'A Mad Tea-Party'.

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement. I cannot be asked to miss it in my weak state. I should only fret.

-Compton-Burnett, Dame Ivy
  A Family and a Fortune, ch.10.

To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseöit is so easy to have any of them in Indiaönever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforeöthat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

-Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel
  Farewell speech on departing from Bombay as Viceroy of India.

Greatness, with private men Esteem'd a blessing, is to me a curse; And we, whom, for our high births, they conclude The happy freemen, are the only slaves. Happy the golden mean!

-Massinger, Philip
  The Great Duke of Florence, act1, sc.1.

Qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature? Un ne¤  ant a' l'e¤  gard de l'infini, un tout a'   l'e¤  gard du ne¤  ant, un milieu entre rien et tout. What is man in nature? Nothing in comparison to the infinite, all in comparison to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, pt.2, no.72.

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.

-Thackeray,William Makepeace
  The Book of Snobs, ch.2.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract ourattention from serious things. Theyare but improved means to an unimproved end.

-Thoreau, Henry David
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Economy'.

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk.

-Whittier,John Greenleaf
  'Lines, Inscribed to Friends UnderArrest forTreason Against the Slave Power', stanza1.