Still she sat before the desk, and could not resolve to quit it, though the increasing gloom, and the profound silence of the apartment, revived a degree of painful awe.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

The taboos of the third class, which apply to trees, plants, houses and localities, are more variable and seem only to follow the rule that anything which for any reason arouses dread or is mysterious, becomes subject to taboo.
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

Miss Matty and I sat assenting to accounts, and schemes, and reports, and documents, of which I do not believe we either of us understood a word; for my father was clear-headed and decisive, and a capital man of business, and if we made the slightest inquiry, or expressed the slightest want of comprehension, he had a sharp way of saying, “Eh?
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

In ancient Rome a dove or pigeon was the emblem of the female procreative energy, and frequently a legendary spirit, the accompaniment of Venus.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

But if any one is seeking aggrandisement, and believes that to be a leader and ruler and despot of numerous subjects, and to have all looking and turning to him, is a finer thing than that,—in this point of view we must acknowledge that the Spartan constitution is 501 deficient, and that of Rome superior and better constituted for obtaining power.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

If he were an unthrift, a ruffian, a drunkard, or a licentious liver, then you had reason; you had reason to take care: but, being none of these, mirth's my witness, an I had twice so many cares as you have, I'd drown them all in a cup of sack.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

But this, and any similar maxim deduced from simple reason, raises an outcry—the church or the state is in danger, if faith in the wisdom of antiquity is not implicit; and they who, roused by the sight of human calamity, dare to attack human authority, are reviled as despisers of God, and enemies of man.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

Endowed with a logical mind, and that practical common sense which is the master quality of the industrial French bourgeois, he thought little, but clearly, and reached a decision only after careful consideration of the matter in hand.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

Many of the lines, however, are rough and difficult of scansion.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

“No; only a flesh cut, although rather a deep one.
— from Daughters of the Dominion: A Story of the Canadian Frontier by Bessie Marchant

Consider what followed them for a reward, and diuers others.
— from Hypnerotomachia: The Strife of Loue in a Dreame by Francesco Colonna

Their tour of a year or two abroad, amidst the mazes and mysteries of civilized life, will rest in their minds like a romantic dream, not to be forgotten, nor to be dreamed over again; their lives too short to aspire to what they have seen to approve, and their own humble sphere in their native wilds so decidedly preferable to the parts of civilized life which they did not admire, that they will probably convert the little money they have made, and their medals and trinkets, into whisky and rum, and drown out, if possible, the puzzling enigma, which, with arguments, the poor fellows have found it more difficult to solve.
— from Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2) being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection by George Catlin

Even Luther, a good Catholic in his day, a reformer, a Doctor of Divinity, gave to the world this couplet: "Who loves not woman, wine and song, Will live a fool his whole life long.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

Or is it that they love pigs too well to endure the presence of a rival, and dispose of the bovine race as fast as they obtain them?
— from Five Acres Too Much A truthful elucidation of the attractions of the country, and a careful consideration of the question of profit and loss as involved in amateur farming, with much valuable advice and instruction to those about purchasing large or small places in the rural districts by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt

Annoyances, revelations, and delusions of persecution now crowded in upon him.
— from August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt: Studies and Impressions by L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby

As we entered Kelát we passed a regiment at drill on a sandy plain outside the walls.
— from A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistán by Harry De Windt

"I have said that the transition might be more or less lengthy, but that it was indispensable; that we must lead mildly and peacefully that Catholic clergy whom you have hitherto held under the tutelage of the State and whom we are about to enfranchise, that we must lead them mildly and peacefully to the practice of a regime altogether different, of a regime of liberty and emancipation, and I have explained that, to my mind, such a transition could not be effected without conferring with the head of the Catholic Church, with the Holy See.
— from The War Upon Religion Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe by Francis A. (Francis Aloysius) Cunningham