The lives of the last Duke of Alva, and of our Constable de Montmorency, were both of them great and noble, and that had many rare resemblances of fortune; but the beauty and glory of the death of the last, in the sight of Paris and of his king, in their service, against his nearest relations, at the head of an army through his conduct victorious, and by a sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, merits methinks to be recorded amongst the most remarkable events of our times.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The theatre comes afterward; then a table at the Midnight Frolic—of course, mother will be along there, but she will serve only to make things more secretive and brilliant as she sits in solitary state at the deserted table and thinks such entertainments as this are not half so bad as they are painted, only rather wearying.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

If you should be wandering meditatively along the banks of some tiny brook, so narrow that you can leap across it without effort, so quiet in its singing its loudest tinkle cannot be heard in the next field, carrying upon its bosom no craft that would draw more water than the curving leaf of a wild-rose floating down stream, too small in volume to dream of a mill-wheel and turning nothing more practical than maybe a piece of violet petal in a little eddy off somewhere,—if, I say, you should be strolling alongside such a brook and should see it suddenly expand, without the least intermediate stage, into a mighty river, turning a thousand great wheels for man's profit as it swept on to the sea, and offering broad highway and favorable currents to a thousand craft freighted with the most precious cargoes of human aspirations; you would behold the aptest physical semblance of that spiritual phenomenon which we witnessed at our last meeting, when in tracing the quiet and mentally wayward course of demure Marian Evans among the suave pastorals of her native Warwickshire, we came suddenly upon the year 1857 when her first venture in fiction— The Scenes from Clerical Life appeared in Blackwood's Magazine and magically enlarged the stream of her influence from the diameter of a small circle of literary people in London to the width of all England.
— from The English Novel and the Principle of its Development by Sidney Lanier

The next was that which seemed most to excite the interest of their Indian guide, although but a small stony island, scantily clothed with trees, lower down the lake.
— from Lost in the Backwoods: A Tale of the Canadian Forest by Catharine Parr Strickland Traill

7 Many other passages in Salmonia gush forth with great force and beauty, and sometimes soar into sublime truths.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 13 — Index to Volume 13 by Various

The eggs of this species closely resemble those of L. albus , but are somewhat smaller in size.
— from A History of North American Birds; Land Birds; Vol. 3 of 3 by Robert Ridgway

It was the time of day when a change in the aspect of the weather so frequently takes place; and the little pool was no longer the reflection of a blue and sunny sky: it sent back the dark and slaty clouds above, and, every now and then, a rough gust shook the painted autumn leaves from their branches, and all other music was lost in the sound of the wild winds piping down from the moorlands, which lay up and beyond the clefts in the mountain-side.
— from The Doom of the Griffiths by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

His style is prolix; his versification, if we omit the Canzoni a Ballo and some sonnets, is slovenly; nor does he show exceptional ability in the conception and conduct of his stories.
— from Renaissance in Italy, Volume 4 (of 7) Italian Literature, Part 1 by John Addington Symonds

He was awakened by a sound so indescribably soft and vague that it might have been only a breath of wind stirring.
— from Madge Morton's Trust by Amy D. V. Chalmers