Thus, with a painful impartiality, did the young man make out the case for Beaufort, and for Beaufort's victim.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Though the great work was never finished, Chaucer succeeded in his purpose so well that in the Canterbury Tales he has given us a picture of contemporary English life, its work and play, its deeds and dreams, its fun and sympathy and hearty joy of living, such as no other single work of literature has ever equaled.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

For Dionysius, because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy and Plato in discourse, condemned the one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a slave into the island of
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

"Remember, Sancho, if thou make virtue thy aim, and take a pride in doing virtuous actions, thou wilt have no cause to envy those who have princely and lordly ones, for blood is an inheritance, but virtue an acquisition, and virtue has in itself alone a worth that blood does not possess.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Then I saw that one came to Passion, and brought him a bag of treasure, and poured it down at his feet; the which he took up, and rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Patience to scorn.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Every Child Can Read by John Bunyan

Abroad, at one time I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I didn't think much about it.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

he, by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a scholar, whom commonly rich men hate: I asked him what he was, he answered, a poet: I demanded again why he was so ragged, he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling the aforesaid procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blast loud enough to be heard from hence to China; and a herald, with world-pervading voice, to make proclamation for a certain class of mortals to take their places.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

they also wear them in large rolls loosly around the neck, or pendulous from the cartelage of the nose or rims of the ears which are purfarated in different places round the extremities for the purpose.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

"Very well, bring your books," he said with, she thought, the air of a schoolmaster toward a pupil in disgrace, and seating himself as he spoke.
— from Elsie's New Relations What They Did and How They Fared at Ion; A Sequel to Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley

Stamens and pistils in different flowers on different plants.
— from Popular Scientific Recreations in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc. by Gaston Tissandier

"At any rate," said Mrs. Twitchel, "our minister's wife will be a pattern; I don't know anybody that goes beyond her either in spinning or fine stitching."
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

All the lights went down, I thought; I struck out my arm to find Leonora, who caught it and pressed it down.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

The concepts and phraseology of the transmigration theory are merely temporary forms in which a deep thought clothes itself: at any rate, they are not necessary adjuncts of the thought; nor do they preclude sympathy with the following condensed statement of this same mystic's world-philosophy: "I died from the mineral and became a plant; I died from the plant and reappeared as an animal; I died from the animal and became a man.
— from Nature Mysticism by John Edward Mercer

[III-7] 'At the top of the first leaf, the two continents are painted in different colours, in two small squares, placed parallel to each other in the angles: the one representing Europe, Asia, and Africa is marked with two large SS; upon the upper arms of two bars drawn from the opposite angles of each square, forming the point of union in the centre; that which indicates America has two SS placed horizontally on the bars, but I am not certain whether upon the upper or lower bars, but I believe upon the latter.
— from The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 5 by Hubert Howe Bancroft

A pose is detestable in man or beast; it not infrequently leads to his undoing.
— from Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor by F. E. Mills (Florence Ethel Mills) Young

“Is the world rotten?” asked Patience, in disgust.
— from Patience Sparhawk and Her Times: A Novel by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

The power of the over-mighty subject has generally been a tyranny; and all power is distrusted by old-fashioned Liberals and philosophic Anarchists, because they have a traditional suspicion that it will fall into hostile or unscrupulous hands.
— from The History of England - a Study in Political Evolution by A. F. (Albert Frederick) Pollard

His father married a Pepys; in discourse, he told me further that his grandfather, my great grandfather, had L800 per annum, in Queen Elizabeth's time, in the very town of Cottenham; and that we did certainly come out of Scotland with the Abbot of Crowland.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1667 N.S. by Samuel Pepys