Neither Charles nor Diocletian were arrived at a very advanced period of life; since the one was only fifty-five, and the other was no more than fifty-nine years of age; but the active life of those princes, their wars and journeys, the cares of royalty, and their application to business, had already impaired their constitution, and brought on the infirmities of a premature old age.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

For all those writers who are ambitious of a lofty style, through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty of language, slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme.
— from On the Sublime by active 1st century Longinus

Hollyhocks, if entirely free from disease, will still be handsome objects, but their beauty will be somewhat on the wane; seeds may be saved from the best flowers, and should be sown at once in a pan of light sandy soil, and placed in a cold frame.
— from Little Folks (September 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

They looked up, and saw above them, on the over-hanging rock, the snow-covering heave and lift itself as a piece of linen stretched on the ground to dry raises itself when the wind creeps under it.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

But in the caves of Brazil, there are many extinct species which are closely allied in size and in other characters to the species still living in South America; and some of these fossils may be the actual progenitors of living species.
— 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

It may occur at any period of life, so long as the original congenital defect remains.
— from Surgical Anatomy by Joseph Maclise

What o’ devil d’ye mean, cried he, to sit idly here like a pack of loitering sneaksbies, and see us stranded, while you may help us, and tow us off into the current?
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

You’re the only one that thinks we’re so funny; look at your professor, he’s older than you are, and we’re good enough for him, but you’re only a brat with the milk still in your nose and all you can prattle is ‘ma’ or ‘mu,’ you’re only a clay pot, a piece of leather soaked in water, softer and slipperier, but none the better for that.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

Hope's doll was made of a corncob; the face was painted on a piece of linen stretched over a ball of wool on the end of the cob.
— from The Child's World: Third Reader by Hetty Sibyl Browne

Mr. Lincoln used to come to our house, his feet encased in a pair of loose slippers, and with an old, faded pair of trousers fastened with one suspender.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete by Abraham Lincoln

At the same meeting a curious project was mooted, and a resolution in its favour adopted, for the permanent shutting up of a portion of Lot Street, and selling the land, the proceeds to be applied to the improvement of Yonge Street.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

They were brought by rail to a place on Lake Superior about opposite here, and smuggled into this country in boats.”
— from Fenn Masterson's Discovery; or, The Darewell Chums on a Cruise by Allen Chapman

It is impossible to doubt that a very general desire prevails among the labouring classes, and those who have laid up little capitals in banks and friendly societies, to acquire portions of land suitable to their means of investment.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850 by Various

Was this a premonition of his own death, a hint, as it were, that in such a place one like Shelley might well hope for from the gods?
— from Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition by Edward Hutton