Dryden, the greatest writer of the age, voiced a general complaint when he said that in his prose and poetry he was "drawing the outlines" of a new art, but had no teacher to instruct him.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

For, in my opinion, it is no less than this idea of immortality, above all other ideas, that is to enter into, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to democracy in the New World.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye—the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so happy and bright in my past.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

This use begins with Cicero and Varro, and gets common in late writers.
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

Margaret had to shake off the recollections of what had been done and said through the day, and turn a sympathising listener to the account of how Dixon had complained that the ironing-blanket had been burnt again; and how Susan Lightfoot had been seen with artificial flowers in her bonnet, thereby giving evidence of a vain and giddy character.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a vast army Greece could not only be conquered, but utterly overwhelmed, and that it was rather to be feared that they would find the Greek cities empty and abandoned, and that the panic flight of the enemy would leave them only vast deserts, where no use could be made of their enormous forces.
— from L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

So long as she was a virgin, a girl could dress in the gaudiest colors, but once prostrato pudore , as the monk delicately puts it, [320] she must change to sober weeds.
— from The American Race A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America by Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton

Seven or eight years ago two labouring men found a very ancient gold chain, which they sold to a dealer who knew the value better than they did; the unlucky-lucky men fared badly in this instance, seeing that they were punished for selling the 'find' without giving notice to the authorities—rather hard lines for rustics, who are not likely to know much about the law of treasure-trove.
— from Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 706 July 7, 1877 by Various

He saw her start seriously on her task and then went downstairs, where he held a violent and gesticulatory conversation with the landlord and with a man in a green baize apron summoned from some dim lair of the hotel.
— from The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol by William John Locke

[227] If by a "money trust" is meant— An established and well-defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance which has been created and is held together through stock holdings, interlocking directorates, and other forms of domination over banks, trust companies, railroads, public-service and industrial corporations, and which has resulted in a vast and growing concentration of control of money and credit in the hands of a comparatively few men— your committee has no hesitation in asserting as the result of its investigation that this condition, largely developed within the past five years, exists in this country to-day.
— from Readings in Money and Banking Selected and Adapted by Chester Arthur Phillips

One of the more muscular members of the branch kept watch and ward in the passage outside the hall, scrutinizing the comrades as they neared the door, lest any uninitiated person or disturber of peace should attempt to gain entry with the faithful; he was thrilled with a vague and grandiose conviction that the meeting was of perilous importance, passed in his familiars—they were all his familiars—with a mysterious nod and compared himself to a sentinel on duty in a post of extreme danger.
— from William—An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

And then suddenly she thought of the luminous evenings on the shores of her great river at home; and saw again the wide horizons, the sky all violet and geranium colour, the infinite depths of the waters, the woods, the plain.
— from Nostalgia by Grazia Deledda

The sand at their feet alternated in veins of umber brown, and ashes of roses; while the vermillion of the rowan berries made a vivid and gorgeous contrast to the glaucous green of the leafage.
— from Annette, the Metis Spy: A Heroine of the N.W. Rebellion by J. E. (Joseph Edmund) Collins

He whose blessedness and virtue are great can be born into that country.
— from Buddhism and Buddhists in China by Lewis Hodous