The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts: the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first principle of thought itself.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Though settled in the city, in some cases for generations, the patrician families were not altogether of it, being distinguished from the other citizens, if not always by [Pg xxv] the possession of ancestral landward estates, at least by their delight in war and contempt for honest industry.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

He seemed to be about four or five and twenty, was rather tall, had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, was very near it.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

This is what I now offer, feeling convinced that it will be welcome not only to the mass of Mozart's admirers, but also to professional musicians; for in them alone is strikingly set forth how Mozart lived and labored, enjoyed and suffered, and this with a degree of vivid and graphic reality which no biography, however complete, could ever succeed in giving.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Conseil made a last effort, and, leaning on my shoulder, while I struck out in a desperate effort, he raised himself half out of the water, then fell back exhausted.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

V. legalize; enact, ordain; decree &c. (order) 741; pass a law, enact a regulation; legislate; codify, formulate; regulate.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

Much I feared, that as I was taken by her ladyship to wait upon her person, I should be quite destitute again, and forced to return to you and my poor mother, who have enough to do to maintain yourselves; and, as my lady's goodness had put me to write and cast accounts, and made me a little expert at my needle, and otherwise qualified above my degree, it was not every family that could have found a place that your poor Pamela was fit for: but God, whose graciousness to us we have so often experienced at a pinch, put it into my good lady's heart, on her death-bed, just an hour before she expired, to recommend to my young master all her servants, one by one; and when it came to my turn to be recommended, (for I was sobbing and crying at her pillow)
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

ANT: Liberate, expedite, accelerate, dismiss, loo
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

and he brings light and joy in a poor feller’s soul,—makes all peace; and I ’s so happy, and loves everybody, and feels willin’ jest to be the Lord’s, and have the Lord’s will done, and be put jest where the Lord wants to put me.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Whips were flourished, cabmen shouted, horses reared, vehicles of all kinds scattered right and left even although there had seemed almost a “block” two seconds before.
— from Rivers of Ice by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

that Doeg, commanded by Saul to fall on the priests who had assisted David, 'slew ... fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod.' Again, Samuel, when a child in the service of the priests, 'ministered before the Lord ... girded with a linen ephod' (1 Sam. ii 18).
— from Ecclesiastical Vestments: Their development and history by Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister

After a time he became noted for his success in undertaking difficult works, and at last employed a staff of divers to do the work, while he chiefly superintended.
— from Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

In that case, they form a large enclosure, and the oldest couple are placed in the centre, with the others around them in regular order—so that, if they are four in number, they will occupy the four angles of a square.
— from The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert by E.‏ (Eugène) Daumas

That in the natural world he has also thus distinguished and does distinguish goods and truths, and likewise evils and falses, appertaining to men, and thereby men themselves, may be known from their lot after death, in that the good enter into heaven, and the evil into hell.
— from The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory Love by Emanuel Swedenborg

They were Senta and the Flying Dutchman, their arms entwined in a loving embrace, and a look of perfect peace and everlasting joy upon their radiant, upturned faces.
— from Stories from the Operas by Gladys Davidson

They radiate heat into the atmosphere at a lower elevation, and increase the temperature of the valleys by the reflection of the sun’s rays, and by the shelter they afford against prevailing winds.
— from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mary Somerville

"Although the barbarous assassination lately enterprised against the person of his sacred majesty and his royal brother, engages all our thoughts to reflect with utmost detestation and abhorrence on that execrable villainy, hateful to God and man, and pay our due acknowledgments to the Divine Providence, which, by extraordinary methods, brought it to pass, that the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, is not taken in the pit which was prepared for him, and that under his shadow we continue to live and to enjoy the blessings of his government; yet, notwithstanding, we find it to be a necessary duty at this time to search into and lay open those impious doctrines, which having been of late studiously disseminated, gave rise and growth to those nefarious attempts, and pass upon them our solemn public censure and decree of condemnation.
— from Books Condemned to be Burnt by James Anson Farrer

A closer examination of the clothes of those guardians and administrators of a lost estate at the bottom of the sea, those strange ship-owners, business men, captains, pursers, those fortune-seekers, money-seekers, embezzlers, adventurers, or whatever they might be, showed that they were filled with polyps, crustaceans, and all sorts of ocean worms, enjoying their stay there as long as something remained beneath their shredded garments except gnawed-off bones.
— from Atlantis by Gerhart Hauptmann