We have so surcharged her with the additional ornaments and graces we have added to the beauty and riches of her own works by our inventions, that we have almost smothered her; yet in other places, where she shines in her own purity and proper lustre, she marvellously baffles and disgraces all our vain and frivolous attempts: “Et veniunt hederae sponte sua melius; Surgit et in solis formosior arbutus antris; Et volucres nulls dulcius arte canunt.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Then, again, there are places like salt deserts where provisions being unobtainable, supplies from home cannot be dispensed with."] As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

It is a pretty little spot there: a pleasant grass plateau, running along by the water’s edge, and overhung by willows.
— from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; ( Dulaure: Histoire de Paris, viii.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

It might be urged, on the other side, that, if the object of punishment is prevention, the heaviest punishment should be threatened where the strongest motive is needed to restrain; and primitive legislation seems sometimes to have gone on that principle.
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

An hour before dark the great walls of the atmosphere plant loomed suddenly before me, and with a sickening thud I plunged to the ground before the small door which was withholding the spark of life from the inhabitants of an entire planet.
— from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

As for fixed abode, he said he had no other than that which chance offered wherever night might overtake him; and his words ended in an outburst of weeping so bitter that we who listened to him must have been very stones had we not joined him in it, comparing what we saw of him the first time with what we saw now; for, as I said, he was a graceful and gracious youth, and in his courteous and polished language showed himself to be of good birth and courtly breeding, and rustics as we were that listened to him, even to our rusticity his gentle bearing sufficed to make it plain.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

luhudluhud n a prostrate, spreading herb found in wasteland and open spaces, bearing small blue flowers in an axilliary, peduncled, leaflike spathe: Commelina diffusa .
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

If a patient lay so dangerously ill that Yanming despaired of his recovery, he would still give him good medicine to comfort his heart, but never took payment for it.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Though a cliff, or sheet of bare rock, is hardly visible among the glens, yet here and there a bright brown patch tells of a recent landslip; and the masses of debris and banks of shingle, backed by a pestilential little swamp at the mouth of each torrent, show how furious must be the downpour and down-roll before the force of a sudden flood, along so headlong an incline.
— from At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies by Charles Kingsley

I am a "poor lost sinner," they told me.
— from An Australian in China Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma by George Ernest Morrison

The small and dingy back room, the dimness of the one poor gas-burner, which was all they could afford to light, the iron box pushed into the corner with its maps and plans locked safely in it, the erect bearing and actual beauty of the tall form, which the shabbiness of worn and mended clothes could not hide or dim.
— from The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett

“D’j’ever hear about ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’?” grumbled Dave Wilbur as he left the pitcher’s box after a particularly long session of batting practice.
— from Copper Coleson's Ghost by Edward P. Hendrick

“I cannot read aright the riddle of life,” replied Adela, pensively, “less still the riddle of love.
— from Heroines of the Crusades by C. A. (Celestia Angenette) Bloss

He grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle, and his hands before his face, crying.
— from Some Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens

A slight mustiness, as of a place long shut up, was in the air, but this was counteracted by a huge bouquet of hawthorn thrust into a large jug which stood upon the sideboard.
— from It was a Lover and His Lass by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

To that part of the Official letter relating to my brother's appearance at the next training I have to reply, that I believe he is at present lying sick in the Mountains above Vera Cruz, the pest-house of the New World, and that the last time I heard from him I was informed that it would be certain death for him to descend into the level country, even were he capable of the exertion, for the fever was then raging there.
— from George Borrow and His Circle Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters of Borrow and His Friends by Clement King Shorter