The formulæ which I obtained in Kiriwina differ from those of Sinaketa in their main parts: whenever there is a list of spondylus necklaces in a Sinaketan tapwana (main part) a list of the several varieties of armshells would be used in a Kiriwinian tapwana .
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

I found the fair nun dressed in her religious habit, and lying on the small bed.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

her sister Johnson; and by and by comes in a gentleman, Mr. Overbury, a pleasant man, who plays most excellently on the flagelette, a little one, that sounded as low as one of mine, and mighty pretty.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Monsieur parle français?” “Not for any length of time,” said Tommy.
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

Better hang your coat on a limb over there, so it won’t get burnt.”
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

The obstinate determination with which every one tried to evade the administrative laws on this subject, is explained, in fact, by the general taste of the French nation for pork.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

“Come, come, clerk,” continued he, “catechise him a little on this subject.”
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Let the climate and vegetation change, let other competing rodents or new beasts of prey immigrate, or old ones become modified, and all analogy would lead us to believe that some at least of the squirrels would decrease in numbers or become exterminated, unless they also became modified and improved in structure in a corresponding manner.
— 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

—Goethe and Lessing, said Donovan, have written a lot on that subject, the classical school and the romantic school and all that.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

From this venerable piece of furniture, with which his shadowy figure and dark weazen face so admirably accorded, he was dealing out strange accounts of the popular superstitions and legends of the surrounding country, with which he had become acquainted in the course of his antiquarian researches.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

One morning I awoke about daylight, and looked out to see if our sailor-boy was at work getting breakfast; but he was not at the fire at all.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as Lady, On this shady seat.
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 by Burton Egbert Stevenson

We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the stair-rail to light us downstairs.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

A lick of the stuff confirmed the nasal diagnosis—it had the taste of beer!
— from Sketches in Crude-oil Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe by John J. (John James) McLaurin

We had brought with us a large quantity of brandy, and a little of this stimulated us to further exertion, but the stock of it was diminishing rapidly, and when we had arrived about half-way over the chain of mountains, where all vegetation but grass disappeared, and with bare inhospitable rocks before us, the remainder of this and our other provisions was exhausted.
— from From Paris to Pekin over Siberian Snows A Narrative of a Journey by Sledge over the Snows of European Russia and Siberia, by Caravan Through Mongolia, Across the Gobi Desert and the Great Wall, and by Mule Palanquin Through China to Pekin by Victor Meignan

"This summer," he said to their mothers, "they need all the out-door air and free life they can have to help their pale cheeks grow rosy, and to give to their weak muscles a little of the strength they require.
— from The Harvest of Years by Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

In number of individuals, too, it far excels; the vast herds of these animals that roam over the karoos and great plains of South Africa consisting sometimes of numbers countless as locusts or the sands of the sea!
— from Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found: A Book of Zoology for Boys by Mayne Reid

What Herodotus tells us are legends of the Scythians, which he had heard with some additions from his fellow-countrymen, in Ordessus and Olbia.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6) by Max Duncker