All kept still, waiting to see who would break silence, which the Distressed Duenna did in these words: "I am confident, most mighty lord, most fair lady, and most discreet company, that my most miserable misery will be accorded a reception no less dispassionate than generous and condolent in your most valiant bosoms, for it is one that is enough to melt marble, soften diamonds, and mollify the steel of the most hardened hearts in the world; but ere it is proclaimed to your hearing, not to say your ears, I would fain be enlightened whether there be present in this society, circle, or company, that knight immaculatissimus, Don Quixote de la Manchissima, and his squirissimus Panza."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

But the Right of Nature, that is, the naturall Liberty of man, may by the Civill Law be abridged, and restrained: nay, the end of making Lawes, is no other, but such Restraint; without the which there cannot possibly be any Peace.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Edwin Epps, of whom much will be said during the remainder of this history, is a large, portly, heavy-bodied man with light hair, high cheek bones, and a Roman nose of extraordinary dimensions.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

‘Twice in the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘but, as a rule, not oftener.’
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Ball decorations have on occasions been literally astounding, but as a rule no elaboration is undertaken other than hanging greens and flowers over the edge of the gallery, if there is a gallery, banking palms in corners, and putting up sheaves of flowers or trailing vines wherever most effective.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

Returning a minute later to his table he became absorbed in the book again: another rouble note was lying upon it.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The very clergy, who preached about the brotherhood of Christians, now that they had become rich and owned great estates, joined in the traditional policy and treated their slaves and serfs as badly as any Roman noble.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

This race is believed to have belonged to the Turanian family, or to have been at any rate non-Semitic.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide Vol. 1 Part 1 by Various

She knocked at the door gently as before, and again receiving no answer, she opened the door.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I had been anxious at receiving no word from Henry.
— from Blindfolded by Earle Ashley Walcott

Montgomery and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response.
— from Irish Witchcraft and Demonology by St. John D. (St. John Drelincourt) Seymour

He endures captivity well, but as a rule never becomes quite tame or trustworthy.
— from The Speech of Monkeys by R. L. (Richard Lynch) Garner

But, as a rule, neither polygyny nor polyandry is favored by woman, in whom the passion of jealousy is very strongly developed.
— from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3 by George Elliott Howard

" Like Ennius, Lucretius disdains the mythological lore with which poetry was overloaded by Alexandrinism, and requires nothing from his reader but a knowledge of the legends generally current.(16)
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

ALDEN & BEARDSLEY, Auburn and Rochester, N.Y., Publishers The Critics give it Unqualified Commendation .
— from Lewie; Or, The Bended Twig by Sarah H. (Sarah Hopkins) Bradford

There has been, at any rate, no writer on moral or political theory that can be mentioned, without seeming comic, in the same breath with the great female novelists.
— from The Victorian Age in Literature by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Perhaps it's because the game is new, but more probably because as a rule nobody knows anything about it.
— from Flying for France: With the American Escadrille at Verdun by James R. (James Rogers) McConnell

But as a rule nothing was done to keep the cattle in any one place.
— from Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

They may be all fairy tales, but at any rate not dull ones, like those about "Annoushka" and "Lubinka."
— from Mimi's Marriage by Lidiia Ivanovna Veselitskaia