Once in a dream a message came speeding over land and sea that winter was descending upon the world from the North Pole, that the Arctic zone was shifting to our mild climate.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller

As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it!
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

It is a curious commentary on the relative destruction of iron instruments compared with those of bronze, that cauteries, which are always described as made of iron and which must have existed in enormous numbers, are among the rarest surgical instruments found.
— from Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times by John Stewart Milne

He offered sacrifice to the gods, called his friends together, and, having taken leave of them, drank bull's blood, according to the most common tradition, but according to others, some quickly-operating poison, and died at Magnesia in the sixty-fifth year of a life almost entirely spent in great political and military employments.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

When our women are not employed with the men in tillage, their usual occupation is spinning and weaving cotton, which they afterwards dye, and make it into garments.
— from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African Written By Himself by Olaudah Equiano

Be it understood, then, that I am discoursing at my own breakfast-table, and that no scientific man is present to trip the autocrat.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller

The best proof of the admirable taste of Josephine is the marked absence of elegance shown by Marie Louise, though both Empresses employed the same milliners and dressmakers, and Marie Louise had a large sum allotted for the expenses of her toilet."
— from Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 For the First Time Collected and Translated, with Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, from Contemporary Sources by Emperor of the French Napoleon I

Modest black dresses, pale faces, sad smiles, and darkness act more strongly than this clumsy tinsel.
— from The Bet, and other stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

But if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life.
— 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

Kausa ra nang kasúha ug abugádung dikampanilya ang muturpáda ánà, You’ll have no trouble getting your case dismissed if you have a good lawyer fighting it for you.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Some human heads are placed in large brass dishes in the public hall of the Dyak house, and to these offerings of food and drink are made.
— from Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles by Edwin Herbert Gomes

Several times you wrote to me for more, and in your last letter——" Toney laughed as she seized Trick in the act of making a dash at Mr. Staines' heels.
— from Harum Scarum's Fortune by Esmè Stuart

Habit, it is true, makes us deem that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have so) think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have held a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification: prisoned paupers in the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded, and King David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes not to have been shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also, it is equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin; by razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance.
— from An Author's Mind : The Book of Title-pages by Martin Farquhar Tupper

And when I asked the Dominican—for there was a Dominican among many others—what it could mean, he said: 'You will not allow Him to suffer for you.
— from The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy by August Strindberg

By their voices I recognized Kornis and Daczo among my pursuers."
— from The Golden Age in Transylvania by Mór Jókai

Fox read to the House of Commons Sir Benjamin Keene’s letter, and delivered a Message from his Majesty, desiring to be enabled to assist the distressed Portuguese and the English residing at Lisbon, to which the House immediately assented, and one hundred thousand pounds, part in money, part in provisions and utensils, were destined to that service, and dispatched as soon as possible.
— from Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, Volume 2 (of 3) by Horace Walpole

Her father had been a tyrant, her mother a dealer in expedients, a diplomatist, a marvel of tact and cleverness, able to achieve wonders in domestic management and in social policy.
— from Wyllard's Weird: A Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

he thought, as some faint link of association, some memory thrust upon him by the aspect of the place in which he was, brought back the simple–minded tutor who had taught him mathematics eighteen years before,––"my poor friend, if this girl had not been my love and my wife, surely the memory of your trust in me would be enough to make me a desperate and merciless avenger of her wrongs."
— from John Marchmont's Legacy, Volumes 1-3 by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

But this also is somewhat at a distance; and, moreover, the population is large, and the accommodation altogether but scanty.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874 by Various

The Aard Varks are diphyodont, and milk teeth are also known in a species of Dasypus , but with these exceptions Edentates are, as far as is known, monophyodont.
— from The Vertebrate Skeleton by Sidney H. (Sidney Hugh) Reynolds