A score of times ere now had I seen them fall and receive no damage— this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

When Sindbad had done speaking his guests withdrew, Hindbad having first received a hundred sequins, but all returned next day to hear the story of the seventh voyage, Sindbad thus began.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang

He is notorious as an over-zealous missionary, who cherished the Boanergian spirit more than the spirit of Christ towards his brethren, and he is only mentioned here on account of the famous controversy he held at the palace of King James with the great Rabbi Nahmonides, when he tried to prove from the Talmud the truth of Christianity, and Rabbi Nahmonides declared that he did not believe in the Haggadic stories of the Talmud.
— from Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ by Aaron Bernstein

A reasonable nature doth then speed, when first in matter of fancies and imaginations, it gives no consent to that which is either false uncertain.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The Eastern prelates had not adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient Rome; nor did they presume to enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or absolving nations from their oaths of allegiance.
— 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

My Lord , MANY of these Poems have, for severall impressions, wandred up and down trusting (as well they might) upon the Authors reputation; neither do they now complain of any injury but what may proceed either from the kindnesse of the Printer, or the curtesie of the Reader; the one by adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire might perish undiscerned, the other by putting such an estimation upon the wit & fancy they find here, that they are content to use it as their own: as if a man should dig out the stones of a royall Amphitheatre to build a stage for a countrey show.
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

"We're all right now," declared Tom.
— from Tom Swift and His Wireless Message; Or, The Castaways of Earthquake Island by Victor Appleton

Anna was small and dark and pretty, and under the cloak of yielding pliant femininity hid a stout heart and certain strenuous characteristics, conspicuous among which was a really notable determination to have her own way in all small matters affecting her comfort and pleasure.
— from The Fortune of the Landrays by Vaughan Kester

There are a thousand handsome men, young, wealthy, That will not stick at any rate, nor danger, To gain so sweet a prize; nor can I blame her, If where she finds a comfort, she deal cunningly, I am a stranger yet.
— from Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 07 of 10 by John Fletcher

Further to the north he met with a race not darker than the Portuguese, and a remarkably handsome people, who seemed to have a peculiar aptitude for commerce.
— from Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley by William Henry Giles Kingston

And as she listened, Diane de Coray crouched the lower in a very agony of self-abasement and remorse, not daring to look up and find the eyes she had learnt to love so passionately grow hard and cruel as love died within them.
— from A Maid of Brittany: A Romance by Mabel Winifred Knowles