I fancied to myself the rural potentate surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of gamekeepers, huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country clowns.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box-tree that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different color, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

His grave demeanour and majestic grace Speak him descended of no vulgar race: Did he some loan of ancient right require, Or came forerunner of your sceptr'd sire?"
— from The Odyssey by Homer

The tricolor Municipal returns without effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves Westward, a respectable river, or complication of still-swelling rivers.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

I immediately steamed up the Tennessee River, following the two gunboats, and, in passing Pittsburg Landing, was told by Captain Gwin that, on his former trip up the river, he had found a rebel regiment of cavalry posted there, and that it was the usual landing-place for the people about Corinth, distant thirty miles.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

The plan of Chichikov, Gogol’s hero-villain, was therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls,” at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax, and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the answers not bearing in all points.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to his "owers."
— from The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A recondite rendering of “contus” would surely give a sharper point to the joke and furnish the riddle with the sting of an epigram.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

That very evening he had been considering the presentation to him next day of a round robin of collective gratitude on his departure; but he should not be thanked like this, in the moonlight, in the garden, by the lady he was so manifestly infatuated with.
— from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

But, oh! the best of worldly joys is as a dream short-lived: 'Tis twelve o'clock, and Robinson reports our cab arrived.
— from Second Book of Verse by Eugene Field

And being a man very discreete and judicious, he apparantly perceived, both by his owne eye, and further information of friends; that from the highest to the lowest (without any restraint, remorse of conscience, shame, or feare of punishment) all sinned in abhominable luxurie, and not naturally onely, but in foule Sodomie, so that the credit of Strumpets and Boyes was not small, and yet might be too easily obtained.
— from The Decameron (Day 1 to Day 5) Containing an hundred pleasant Novels by Giovanni Boccaccio

And now, as he cautiously made his way toward the light, he began to realise that he was in a rough rift or chasm in the rock, whose floor descended at about the same rate as the hill-slope; and five minutes after, he forced his passage out through the bushes which choked the entrance, to hear, away on his left, a distant “cooey.”
— from The Rajah of Dah by George Manville Fenn

On our way we had to pass round a sandy islet and a rocky reef of considerable extent; after which we anchored off a sandy beach to the eastward of Rocky Head.
— from Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 1 by Philip Parker King

A recondite rendering of "contus" would surely give a sharper point to the joke and furnish the riddle with the sting of an epigram.
— from The Satyricon — Volume 06: Editor's Notes by Petronius Arbiter

The emperor wore a rich robe of cloth of gold of cramoisy, and his son was in a robe of green damask.
— from Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477 by Ruth Putnam

And be it further enacted that the grants aforesaid are made upon condition that said Company shall pay said bonds at maturity, and shall keep said railroad and telegraph line in repair and use, and shall at all times transmit dispatches over said telegraph line, and transport mail, troops and munitions of war, supplies and public stores upon said railroad for the Government, whenever required to do so by any department thereof, and that the department shall at all times have the preference in the use of the same for all the purposes aforesaid (at fair and reasonable rates of compensation, not to exceed the amounts paid by private parties for the same kind of service), and all compensation for services rendered for the Government shall be applied to the payment of said bonds and interest until the whole amount is fully paid.
— from Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific by Stuart Daggett

The genuineness of Ephesians is not of great importance to the student of Pauline theology, unless the closely allied Epistle to the Colossians is also rejected; and there has been a remarkable return of confidence in the Pauline authorship of this letter.
— from Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

As a rough rule of conduct—yes; for the masses of people—yes; but can a King obey Christ's command, or a Judge "do unto others as" he "would that they should do unto" him?
— from Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915 by Annie Besant