It is not to be wondered at that poor Twemlow should decline to inflict a letter on his noble cousin (who has gout in the temper), inasmuch as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which he lives, takes it out of him, as the phrase goes, in extreme severity; putting him, when he visits at Snigsworthy Park, under a kind of martial law; ordaining that he shall hang his hat on a particular peg, sit on a particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular people, and perform particular exercises: such as sounding the praises of the Family Varnish (not to say Pictures), and abstaining from the choicest of the Family Wines unless expressly invited to partake.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

There were espaliers of fruit-trees, a pear-tree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and lime-trees, an apple-tree in the shape of an umbrella, plum-trees trained into arches, crests, candelabra, and even into the number 1862—the year when Pesotsky first took up horticulture.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Now it is quite undeniable that, of these four states of things, each is, a priori , possible , some one must be true, and the other three must be false.
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll

He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one—but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him—till by reiterated acts of such combination, he gets foisted into her inventory— —And then good night.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

At a later period the luxury of side-dishes consisted in the quantity and in the variety of the pastry; Rabelais names sixteen different sorts at one repast; Taillevent mentions pastry called covered pastry, Bourbonnaise pastry, double-faced pastry, pear pastry , and apple pastry ; Platina speaks of the white pastry with quince, elder flowers, rice, roses, chestnuts, &c.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

The afternoon papers puffed scraps of news under big headlines.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Mr. Yates took the subject from his friend as soon as possible, and immediately gave Sir Thomas an account of what they had done and were doing: told him of the gradual increase of their views, the happy conclusion of their first difficulties, and present promising state of affairs; relating everything with so blind an interest as made him not only totally unconscious of the uneasy movements of many of his friends as they sat, the change of countenance, the fidget, the hem!
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Equinoctial flowers , which serve for the construction of Flora’s dial, since they open at a certain and exact hour of the day, and for the most part close at another determinate hour: for instance, the Leontodon Taraxacum , dandelion, opens at 5-6, closes at 8-9; Hieracium Pilosella , mouse-ear hawkweed, opens at 8, closes at 2; Tragopogon pratensis , yellow goat’s-beard, opens at sunrise, and shuts at noon with such regularity, that the husbandman who adopts it as the signal of dinner-time need not fear to have his pudding too much or too little boiled; Sonchus lævis , smooth sow-thistle, opens at 5, closes at 11-12; Lactuca sativa , cultivated lettuce, opens at 7, closes at 10; Tragopogon luteus , yellow goat’s-beard, opens at 3-5, closes at 9-10; Lapsana , nipplewort, opens at 5-6, closes at 10-11; Nymphæaalba , white water-lily, opens at 7, closes at 5; Papaver nudicaule , naked poppy, opens at 5, closes at 7; Hemerocallis fulva , tawny day-lily, opens at 5, closes at 7-8; Convolvulus , opens at 5-6; Malva , mallow, opens at 9-10, closes at l; Arenaria purpurea , purple sandwort, opens at 9-10, closes at 2-3; Anagallis , pimpernel, opens at 7-8; Portulaca hortensis , garden purslain, opens at 9-10, closes at 11-12; Dianthus prolifer , proliferous pink, opens at 8, closes at 1; Cichoreum , succory, opens at 4-5; Hypocharis , opens at 6-7, closes at 4-5; Crepis , opens at 4-5, closes at 10-11; Picris , opens at 4-5, closes at 12; Calendula Africana , opens at 7, closes at 3-4, &c. “Thus in each flower and simple bell, That in our path betrodden lie, Are sweet remembrancers who tell How fast the winged moments fly.”
— from Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest Being an Attempt to Illustrate the First Principles of Natural Philosophy by the Aid of Popular Toys and Sports by John Ayrton Paris

"Some evenings a strange odor blows down the air of this garden, like a phantom perfume," said Owen.
— from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

He is a pleasant person, smiles on adversity and is excellent company.
— from Everybody's Book of Luck by Anonymous

A parish pleasantly situated on the banks of the Thames, containing 265 houses, and 1288 inhabitants.
— from Survey of the High Roads of England and Wales. Part the First. Comprising the counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. etc. by Edward S. Mogg

"If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro," she often remarked, shaking her head.
— from Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches by Constance Fenimore Woolson

[38] He had also published previously some other sermons; a letter written to the Clergy of his Archdeaconry; and 'Counsel and Directions, Divine and Moral, in plain and familiar Letters of Advice to a Young Gentleman' (his nephew, Thomas Higgons), 'soon after his admission into a College in Oxon;' and his Memoirs, some of them of a painfully personal character, were edited by the Surtees Society in 1865.
— from Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2) by Walter H. (Walter Hawken) Tregellas

Enclosed, too, by a very large tract of land, and in a most magnificent mansion which he built for himself and his companions at Ripaglia, a place pleasantly situated on the Lake of Geneva, Amedeus, the last Count and first Duke of Savoy, so abandoned himself in his unobserved private and solitary life, to all kinds of debaucheries, that Desmarets says in his "Tableau des Papes" (p. 167) that from that originated the phrase "to feast and make merry,"—"faire repaille"; yet this very Amedeus afterwards acted the part of the only true Pope at Tonon during the greater portion of the two years, 1440 and 1441, having been elected to the Pontificate by the Fathers of Basle during the Papacy of Eugenius IV.
— from Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century by John Wilson Ross

'Their war camp is at present pitched somewhere on the lower reaches of the Zaporoska River—which, as you well know, is a wilderness of reeds, a swampy jungle in which our last expedition was cut to pieces by those masterless devils.'
— from The Devil in Iron by Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard

I wanted in some way or other to give vent to and express the same; and I wrote verses, dramatic pieces, and a thousand different kinds of essays; composed music, drew and painted pictures, some of them worse than others."
— from Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century by W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport) Adams