Hearing me confess my love of the Nuit d'Octobre , he had burst out in a bray of laughter, like a bugle-call, and told me, by way of warning: "You must conquer your vile taste for A. de Musset, Esquire.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

The crow is a bird of long life, and diviners tell that she taketh heed of spyings and awaitings, and teacheth and sheweth ways, and warneth what shall fall.
— from Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus by Bartholomaeus, Anglicus, active 13th century

Watts, Isaac , Nonconformist divine, born at Southampton, son of a schoolmaster; chose the ministry as his profession, was for a time pastor of a church in Mark Lane, but after a succession of attacks of illness he resigned and went on a visit to his friend Sir Thomas Abney, with whom he stayed for 36 years, at which time his friend died, and he resumed pastoral duties as often as his health permitted; he wrote several books, among which was a book on "Logic," long a university text-book, and a great number of hymns, many of them of wide fame and much cherished as helps to devotion (1674-1748).
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

In spite of the numerous departures there are still enough blasé dandies and beauties of light locks and lighter reputation to bring the blush to an honest man's cheek.
— from Paris under the Commune The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs) by John Leighton

He rested one foot gingerly upon a bed of leaves, leant a little more weight to it as he prepared to draw the other one forward, and just then two bands of steel arose up out of the ground and gripped him nearly to the knee.
— from The Race of the Swift by Edwin Carlile Litsey

Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment.
— from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

He was declaiming against banks of limited liability, and some one asked—'Why, what do you say, then, to the Bank of England, where you keep your own account?' 'Oh!'
— from Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market by Walter Bagehot

The moon was laying a band of living light across the vast bosom of the sea, like a girdle.
— from Aylwin by Theodore Watts-Dunton