After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

He is heir to every superstition and by profession an apologist; his deepest vocation is to rescue, by some logical tour de force , what spontaneously he himself would have taken for a consecrated error.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Nicholas, stung by the concluding taunt, darted an indignant glance at him; but commanding himself as well as he could, entered upon a close examination of the documents, at which John Browdie assisted.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

The proud inscription of a column, erected on a lofty mountain, announced to posterity, that a Chinese army had marched seven hundred miles into the heart of their country.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Sir, Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retir'd thatch'd house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may have become adapted to similar conditions, and thus have assumed a close external resemblance; but such resemblances will not reveal—will rather tend to conceal their blood-relationship.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

On this occasion the King gave a curious explanation for having stayed away from the performances of Rienzi in Berlin, which was afterwards reported to me.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

A complicated element in the State Department's conduct of propaganda was the fact that at no time did the State Department enjoy even a monopoly of the governmental mass communications of the United States abroad.
— from Psychological Warfare by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

Such a guiding thread is needed, if we are only to hope for a connected empirical cognition according to a thoroughgoing conformity of nature to law, even its unity according to empirical laws.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

I think this holds true to a certain extent with our domestic productions: if nourishment flows to one part or organ in excess, it rarely flows, at least in excess, to another part; thus it is difficult to get a cow to give much milk and to fatten readily.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

The blood pressure is low and, as a result of this disturbance of the circulation, faintness is a common early symptom.
— from Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc. by Charles McIlvaine

But Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary, who in frivolity seemed a contemporary embodiment of Nero, deemed cheap wit a sufficient reply to all remonstrances, and had to confess afterwards that he had utterly miscalculated the forces with which he had to deal.
— from Ulster's Stand For Union by Ronald McNeill

Thus the structure of regulation of industry, which had (p. 232) been built up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or which had survived from the Middle Ages, was now torn down; the use of the powers of government to make men carry on their economic life in a certain way, to buy and sell, labor and hire, manufacture and cultivate, export and import, only in such ways as were thought to be best for the nation, seemed to be entirely abandoned.
— from An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England by Edward Potts Cheyney

If, on the other hand, every one is prophesying and an unbeliever or an ungifted man comes in, he is convicted by all and closely examined by all, 014:025 and the hidden evils of his heart are brought to light.
— from Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, 1 Corinthians by Richard Francis Weymouth

country comparison to the world: 34 HIV/AIDS - deaths: 9,800 (2007 est.) country comparison to the world: 33 Major infectious diseases: degree of risk: high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea vectorborne diseases: dengue fever, malaria, and yellow fever water contact disease: leptospirosis (2009) Nationality: noun: Colombian(s) adjective: Colombian Ethnic groups: mestizo 58%, white 20%, mulatto 14%, black 4%, mixed black-Amerindian 3%, Amerindian 1% Religions: Roman Catholic 90%, other 10% Languages: Spanish Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 90.4% male: 90.1% female: 90.7% (2005 census)
— from The 2009 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

201 and 209, are practically ruined, though if the trouble is not of long standing, the plates may be revived somewhat by a long charge at a very low rate, using distilled water in place of the electrolyte, and then discharging at a current equal to about one-eight to one-tenth of the ampere hour capacity of the battery at the discharge board.
— from The Automobile Storage Battery: Its Care And Repair by Otto A. Witte

These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.
— from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4 by H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky

"Miss Kitty is probably a cute enough name when you're young," the catty woman was saying.
— from A Woman's Place by Mark Clifton