Such 'Doyen du Genre Humain, Eldest of Men,' had shewn himself there, in these weeks: Jean Claude Jacob, a born Serf, deputed from his native Jura Mountains to thank the National Assembly for enfranchising them.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

She takes up a book, sits down facing me and begins moving her lips . . .
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

A nation's great men, he says, are but slight deviations from the general level.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

It would no longer have any but sombre days for him, for he had reached the age of sixty-two.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

Though a lion cowarded was known in ancient days, there can be no doubt that formerly an artist felt himself quite at liberty to put the tail between the legs if this seemed artistically desirable, without necessarily having interfered with the arms by so doing. Fig. 294.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

(If the Cynics had composed treatises with any serious purpose and not merely with a frivolous aim, it would have been proper for my opponent to be guided by these and to try in each case to refute the opinions that I hold on the subject; and then, if they proved to be in harmony with those original doctrines, he could not attack me for bearing false witness; but if they proved not to be in harmony, then he could have barred my opinions from a hearing, as the Athenians barred spurious documents from the Metroum.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

Built on a narrow strip of foreshore, open to the breakers, and squeezed down to the water’s edge by an almost precipitously rising jungle at its back, the village has been made sea-proof by walls of stone surrounding the houses with several bulwarks, and by stone dykes forming small artificial harbours along the sea front.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

It never happens outside of the story-books that a baby so deserted finds home and friends at once.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

It was early—she had a long day before her, a beautiful spring day; for she noticed now the tender green of the leaves and the youth of the grass.
— from Many Kingdoms by Elizabeth Garver Jordan

So he again gave his consent to a renewal of negotiations for an outside league, though, as we shall soon see, it was on a basis somewhat different from that of the previous ones.
— from Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Vol. 1 of 2 Life, Letters to 1535 by Roger Bigelow Merriman

Let me ask, then, in republishing, with additions, a collection of little pieces, many of which have been objected to, at one time or another, as being somewhat deliberately frivolous, why art should not, if it please, concern itself with the artificially charming, which, I suppose, is what my critic means by Patchouli?
— from Silhouettes by Arthur Symons

He was the catspaw of that half-dozen astute Ministers who terrorised the Emperor and his Court, and by so doing feathered their own nests.
— from The Price of Power Being Chapters from the Secret History of the Imperial Court of Russia by William Le Queux

Caste also obtains among the Jains and Sikhs, but Sikhism is really little more than a Hindu sect, while the Jains, who are nearly all Banias, scarcely differ from Vaishnava Hindu Banias, and have accepted caste, though it is not in accordance with the real tenets of their religion.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell

The other had the same costume, except that his drawers were brown and his hunting-shirt blue, while a blanket of red and black stripes drooped from his shoulders to his heels.
— from Overland: A Novel by John William De Forest

would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven!
— from Personal Poems I Part 1 from Volume IV of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier

ROYAL ALFRED YACHT CLUB By G. L. Blake No sporting society in the whole of the three kingdoms has done more to encourage seamanship than that which has its station in Dublin Bay, and has been known for so many years past as the Royal Alfred Yacht Club. Worked on a basis somewhat different from that of most clubs, whose object is the encouragement of amateur sailing, this community sprang into being on March 19, 1857, at a meeting held in Gilbert's Hotel, Westland Row, Dublin, under the chairmanship of that fine practical yachtsman the late Mr. William Cooper, so well known to all patrons of the sport by his valuable works on the pastime he loved so well, written under the pseudonym 'Vanderdecken.'
— from Yachting, Vol. 2 by Dufferin and Ava, Frederick Temple Blackwood, Marquis of

I wanted to kill him; and would, if it hadn't struck me as being so darned funny!
— from Sunlight Patch by Credo Fitch Harris