By the lamp in the old woman's hand Mr. Brown saw that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with iron plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants of another.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the midst of this inextricable mass of plants and sea weed, I noticed some charming pink halcyons and actiniae, with their long tentacles trailing after them, and medusae, green, red, and blue.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

But, although she was in no small degree delighted by this discovery, which reflected so much credit on her own quickness of perception, it did not lessen her motherly anxiety in Kate’s behalf; and accordingly, with a vast quantity of trepidation, she quitted her own box to hasten into that of Mrs. Wititterly.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

To dispute about its reality can only occur to a mind perverted by over-subtilty, and such discussion always arises from a false application of the principle of sufficient reason, which binds all ideas together of whatever kind they may be, but by no means connects them with the subject, nor yet with a something which is neither subject nor object, but only the ground of the object; an absurdity, for only objects can be and always are the ground of objects.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

A very large bedroom, a small dressing room, and a study where I now sit with the sun coming in the windows which are all its sides.
— from Letters from China and Japan by Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

Yi used all his efforts, and at last the building was placed on the approved site, where it now stands.
— from Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Faries by Yuk Yi

And so will I not, sir.
— from Robert Greene: [Six Plays] by Robert Greene

I wrenched at the sword, but it would not come, and I dropped it and galloped after Sapt, whom I now saw about twenty yards ahead.
— from The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

But as such an assertion would be absurd in the extreme, not to say impious, and as it is the height of injustice as well as an example of the most dangerous tendency in religion, to account as sins what is not such in reality it appears to me that so far from the question respecting the lawfulness of polygamy being trivial, it is of the highest importance that it should be decided.
— from Woman, Church & State The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex by Matilda Joslyn Gage

“You are saying what is not so!” burst out Mr. Glassford.
— from The Motor Boys in the Clouds; or, A Trip for Fame and Fortune by Clarence Young

From your sweet love, a share which is not small; For in the sacrament one crumb is all.”
— from How Lisa Loved the King by George Eliot

On one manor (that where the copyholders had estates of inheritance) the fine was fixed by custom at a sum which is not stated, but which could not be increased.
— from The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century by R. H. (Richard Henry) Tawney

In addition to this 10l., I received last evening a letter with 5l., from a sister whom I never saw, and who has been several times used by God as an instrument to supply our wants.
— from A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller. Part 1 by George Müller

The reason for using such phrases is quite clear; every time we do so it is because we feel instinctively that we have just made a statement which is not sufficiently explicit; we are more or less aware that we have expressed something in terms rather too abstract, and we wish to reduce our statement to more concrete terms; we feel the necessity for concreteness .
— from The Principles of Language-Study by Harold E. Palmer