The two ladies looked over it together; and he sat smiling and talking to them the whole time, in a voice a little subdued, but very audible to every body.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

388.—If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter.
— from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty structure of human happiness and misery; resting, too, on the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in common with the brute, and exposing him to such violent emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convulsion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written and may be read in the lines on his face.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer

But as for that other school of historians, a perhaps still more "modern" school, a voluptuous and lascivious school which ogles life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, which uses the word "artist" as a glove, and has nowadays established a "corner" for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation;
— from The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

But I feel sure” (he-looked severely at the late superintendent's brother-in-law) “that he will in some way, by some written expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own interests and—if I may say so—our interests so imperatively demanded its continuance.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy

She made a very average looking shop-girl with the exception of her features.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

Immediately after death has occurred in a village, a large stick is placed on the reef in front of its landing beach, and a conch shell is tied to it.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

And vain and lonely stood the tower— The tower in Guelderland.
— from The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Dean Milman, Arminius Vámbéry , and Leslie Stephen.
— from On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations. by Charles Hardwick

I have often read and often heard of the distrust and jealousy that accompany love; but I think that such a love must be a vulgar and low sentiment.
— from Eugene Aram — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

From the 13th the British cavalry as well as the Spanish were in touch with Soult; General Long had been lying about Villafranca and Los Santos till that day, with three British and four Portuguese regiments
— from A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. 4, Dec. 1810-Dec. 1811 Massena's Retreat, Fuentes de Oñoro, Albuera, Tarragona by Charles Oman

A very ancient legend states that Thoth acted in this capacity in the great trial that took place in heaven when Osiris was accused of certain crimes by his twin-brother Set, the god of evil.
— from The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians by Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir

I would also again recommend to Congress that authority be given to the President to employ the naval force to protect American merchant vessels, their crews and cargoes, against violent and lawless seizure and confiscation in the ports of Mexico and the Spanish American States when these countries may be in a disturbed and revolutionary condition.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and vociferous; as loud, stormy, and sublime as those winds which he represents as shaking the Hebrides, and rocking the old castle which frowned on the dark-rolling sea beneath.
— from McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader by William Holmes McGuffey