(A large moist stain appears on her robe.)
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

But perhaps the chief mistake in Art Schools has been that they have too largely confined themselves to training students mechanically to observe and portray the thing set before them to copy, an antique figure, a still-life group, a living model sitting as still and lifeless as he can.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

There may be truly said to be a constant struggle going on between, on the one hand, the tendency to reversion to a less modified state, as well as an innate tendency to further variability of all kinds, and, on the other hand, the power of steady selection to keep the breed true.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand as little, my senses are altogether dulled and blunted; truly I do very shrewdly suspect that I am enchanted.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Baudru alighted at La Muette station; and, with a nonchalant air, strolled into the Bois de Boulogne.
— from The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc

Dirty, slipshod women passed and repassed, on their way to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard; children screamed, and fought, and played together, in another; the tumbling of the skittles, and the shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and a hundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult—save in a little miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all quiet and ghastly, the body of the Chancery prisoner who had died the night before, awaiting the mockery of an inquest.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

On one of his periodical visits, while he was revolving this question in his mind, the Marchioness came down to him, alone, looking more smiling and more fresh than ever.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

The Italian, more direct and less metaphysical still, alludes, in the accusation by the spirit, to no other punishment save that of conscience, and declares the magician to be poisoned through and through in himself: “Tu sei cattivo e scelerato, Tu sei avvelenato
— from Legends of Florence: Collected from the People, First Series by Charles Godfrey Leland

An ecclesiastic whom Gibbon calls "the incomparable historian of the Council of Trent"; a mathematician of whom Galileo said, "No man in Europe surpasses Master Paolo Sarpi in his knowledge of the science of mathematics"; an anatomist whom Acquapendente, the famous surgeon of Padua, calls "the oracle of this century"; a metaphysician who, as Lord Macaulay says, anticipated "Locke on the Human Understanding"; and a statesman who saved Venice from the domination of the papacy—it is no wonder that Dr. Bedell, chaplain of the English Ambassador to Venice, should have said that he was "holden for a miracle in all manner of knowledge, divine and human.
— from A Year in Europe by Walter W. (Walter William) Moore

"You are going away and leave me?" she asked anxiously.
— from The Camp Fire Girls at School; Or, The Wohelo Weavers by Hildegard G. Frey

We’ve been too much husband and wife not to feel something for each other at a later meeting, such as this.
— from The Inevitable by Louis Couperus

There are large machine shops and spacious quarters for officers and marines, a graving dock capable of accommodating vessels of large size, and an ice factory which supplies the navy and the royal palace.
— from Travels in the Far East by Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse That witnessed what they could never understand Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
— from Poems by Edward Thomas

"We must wait a little," replied Ready; "but I don't know whether you will go; we must not all three go at once, and leave Mrs. Seagrave alone."
— from Masterman Ready by Frederick Marryat