The profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could offer.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I to my Lord Sandwich, and there alone with him to talke of his affairs, and particularly of his prize goods, wherein I find he is wearied with being troubled, and gives over the care of it to let it come to what it will, having the King’s release for the dividend made, and for the rest he thinks himself safe from being proved to have anything more.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there grim with indignation.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Having kept close in shore, for the land-breeze, we passed the mission of San Juan Campestráno the same night, and saw distinctly, by the bright moonlight, the hill which I had gone down by a pair of halyards in search of a few paltry hides.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

The dominions from which she draws her resources, lying at an immense distance from the capital and from one another, make it more necessary for her than for any other State to temporize, until she can inspire with activity all parts of her enormous but disjointed empire."
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

So Flamininus, leaving a portion of his army there to prevent a warlike demonstration anywhere, with the rest turned his attention to the country districts; these he ravaged with the aid of his brother and the Rhodians and Eumenes, son of Attalus.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

Formerly people thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," was a proof of his lofty origin, of his divinity.
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He was met by the Corporation and Professors, on his arriving within the precincts of the college, and thus addressed by the learned President Kirkland— "We bid you welcome, General Lafayette, to the most ancient of the seminaries of our land.
— from Memoirs of General Lafayette With an Account of His Visit to America and His Reception By the People of the United States; From His Arrival, August 15th, to the Celebration at Yorktown, October 19th, 1824. by Samuel L. (Samuel Lorenzo) Knapp

Taylor deployed a portion of his force as skirmishers, and a company of dragoons overrode the first Mexican battery.
— from A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) by Edwin Emerson

Doctor, thy accents, soft and bland, Are ever sure to please; What female bosom can withstand A Parson on his knees?
— from Gallery of Comicalities; Embracing Humorous Sketches by Robert Cruikshank

On the contrary, I hesitated over a point of honor.
— from Patroon van Volkenberg A tale of old Manhattan in the year sixteen hundred & ninety-nine by Henry Thew Stephenson

When he put up for the night at a hotel, he usually succeeded in paying a part of his hotel bill in medicine or toilet articles.
— from Walter Sherwood's Probation by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

How could she have pretended love, and raised him to such a pinnacle of hope only to cast him down to such utter depths of despair!
— from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

He had even managed to go back and hide his horse and put on his everyday garb, but, when he reached the stable, he was overcome by weakness and was not able to make his way into the house.
— from Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant

Marcella was coming to understand that he looked upon illness with a certain hardness and lack of pity that surprised her; he was immensely interested in it, he liked to dabble in it, but not from a passion of healing nearly so much as from curiosity and technical interest.
— from Captivity by Leonora Eyles

She sent the serpent, who, with its sinuous advances, prevailed on him to disobey this law of hate.
— from The Temptation of St. Antony; Or, A Revelation of the Soul by Gustave Flaubert

Our Southern readers must be given to understand that it was a piece of humour,—a quiz, in short,—on the part of the Outlaw, who was too sagacious to propose such a rencontre in reality.
— from Rob Roy — Volume 01 by Walter Scott