She took no particular notice of the big one, but the other was a fair, slight chap, carrying a tin varnish can in one hand.”
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

Note 823 ( return ) [ We have had Suetonius’s reminiscences, derived through his grandfather and father successively, CALIGULA, c. xix.; OTHO,
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

These reflections are a rather serious commencement of a sketch which was intended to be of a more lively description; one of my chief objects in writing this chapter being to afford a connecting link between my wife's sketches, and to account for some circumstances connected with our situation, which otherwise would be unintelligible to the reader.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the philosopher Thales’s mule?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

But the wife who has thus been rendered licentious, will probably endeavour to fill the void left by the loss of her husband's attentions; for she cannot contentedly become merely an upper servant after having been treated like a goddess.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

There is a very close connection between a fine, strong, clean physique and a fine, strong, clean character.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

"This is called the maiden begonia and is, in fact, a foreign species," Chia Cheng observed.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

The immense number of attempts at its solution sent to me from all parts of the United Kingdom and from several Continental countries show a very kind disposition amongst our readers to help the worthy vicar of Chumpley St. Winifred over his parochial difficulty.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chrysostom answers, facile si coelum cogitaveris , with great facility, if thou shalt but meditate on heaven.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Observation A mermaid was a fabled sea creature Cold-eyed But beautiful of face.
— from Gossip by Mona Gould

I that day also found several cheeses cased up in lead, one of which I then opened and dined upon: but what time of day or night it was when I eat this meal I could not tell.
— from The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1 (of 2) by Robert Paltock

At that moment, falling upon the sudden hush in the room which had followed John Musgrave’s curt speech, starting on a single note, thrice repeated, and then bursting into a joyous peal, the Moresby chimes broke softly on the stillness, died away on the wind, and were borne back to their listening ears with a fuller, sweeter cadence, conveying the message of the centuries of peace and good-will upon earth.
— from Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor by F. E. Mills (Florence Ethel Mills) Young

"What she wanted was a figurehead she could control—and that's what she got.
— from Pagan Passions by Randall Garrett

A famous Swedish cantatrice came among others, and in her own pleasant way offered to sing a 'Mountain Melody' of her native land.
— from The Murder of Delicia by Marie Corelli

And go to his study when you liked, you almost always found some Chinese Christians there.
— from Forty Years in South China: The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. by John Gerardus Fagg