as we Could not pass with the large Canoes up the N. W. Side for the rocks, the wind high and a rainey disagreeable evining.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

The muscular parietes of the abdomen relax during every inspiration, and thus this cavity gains that space which it loses by the encroachment of the dilating lungs.
— from Surgical Anatomy by Joseph Maclise

Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life itself.
— from White Fang by Jack London

Nor will he bear the fall who cannot sustain the shock: “Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est; ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be said.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

He had the appearance of a rather distinguished Englishman.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Anatole Cerfberr

We can scarcely detect any real distinction except a twofold one between vessels whose primary armament is the gun and vessels whose primary armament is the torpedo.
— from Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian Stafford Corbett

The Zouaves accompanied this expedition, and whether in their charges against the mountaineers, who, with the aid of the Arab regulars, defended each pass, or sustaining the shock of the provincial cavalry, or even standing unmoved before the attack of Abd-el-Kader's terrible "Reds," [Footnote: The mounted body-guard of Abd-el-Kader, so called by the French from their complete red uniform.]
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

Another English workman, Master Thomas of Leghton, made the screen of wrought-iron which protects this monument, round which run the words— "Ici Gost Alinor, jadis Reine de Engleterre Femme Al Rey Edward, Fiz le Rey Henri E Fille Al Rey de Espagne, Contesse de Puntiff Del Alme de li Dieu pur sa pitié eyt merci.
— from The Story of Westminster Abbey by Violet Brooke-Hunt

‘When I rustle into a room, dear, every woman in it knows that my skirt is lined with silk.’
— from A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus by Arthur Conan Doyle

The age respectfully declines epics.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878 by Various

Then the Lady took her gay embroidered cloak, which lay at the foot of the oak tree, and cast it over him and, as Ralph deemed, eyed him lovingly, and belike the Knight of the Sun thought in likewise, for he scowled upon her; and for awhile but little was the joyance by the ancient oak, unless it were with the Lady.
— from The Well at the World's End: A Tale by William Morris

“The tongue of the slanderer,” says Massillon, “is a devouring fire, which tarnishes whatever it touches; which exercises its fury on the good grain equally as on the chaff, on the profane as on the sacred; which, wherever it passes, leaves only desolation and ruin; digs even into the bowels of the earth, and fixes itself on things the most hidden; turns into vile ashes what only a moment before had appeared to us so precious and brilliant; acts with more violence and danger than ever, in the time when it was apparently smothered up and almost extinct; which blackens what it cannot consume, and sometimes sparkles and delights before it destroys.”
— from Talkers: With Illustrations by John Bate

She don't know what in the world to make of the great long-legged, long-bodied critter, that is six times as large as herself, that has cheeks as red as if it drank brandy, an imperial as large as a Russian dragoon, eats all the food of the poultry-yard, takes a shocking sight of nursing when it is young, and gets as sarcy as the devil when it grows up."
— from Nature and Human Nature by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

In grace upon the grass they lie And spread their tresses to the sun, And rival, musical as they, The blackbird's alto shake and run. Did ever Love, on hunting bent, Come idly humming through the hay, And, to his sudden joyfulness, Find fairer game at close of day?
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 by Burton Egbert Stevenson