The mother of Valentinian was jealous of the power which she was incapable of exercising; she reigned twenty-five years, in the name of her son; and the character of that unworthy emperor gradually countenanced the suspicion that Placidia had enervated his youth by a dissolute education, and studiously diverted his attention from every manly and honorable pursuit.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

"That's it!" said Jo to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good will toward one's fellow men could beautify and dignify even a stout German teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of Bhaer.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Me and Mrs Boffin went to look at it, and finding it beyond a doubt Eminently Aristocratic (though a trifle high and dull, which after all may be part of the same thing) took it.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

[28] That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by a deliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity,—a Roman simplicity perhaps.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

The Albion was founded in 1822 by Dr. John Charlton Fisher, who afterwards became a distinguished Editor at Quebec.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

Every purely beneficent act all help entirely and genuinely unselfish, being, as such, exclusively inspired by another's distress, is, in fact, if we probe the matter to the bottom, a dark enigma, a piece of mysticism put into practice; inasmuch as it springs out of, and finds its only true explanation in, the same higher knowledge that constitutes the essence of whatever is mystical.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

The poor creature has met her death by a dreadful end, and I don’t want your ladyship to think, now she’s gone, that I was unduly hard on her.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other.
— from The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane

It'll be a double expense, and I can't be here much longer.
— from The Carved Cupboard by Amy Le Feuvre

On March 23 she writes:—' My going to London would be a dreadful expense, and bring on a thousand inquiries and inconveniences—visits to Johnson and from Cator.'
— from Life of Johnson, Volume 4 1780-1784 by James Boswell

A single brood of larva were bred in Java by a Dutch entomologist, and produced males as well as tailed and tailless females, and there is every reason to believe that this is always the case, and that forms intermediate in character never occur.
— from The Malay Archipelago, Volume 1 The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature by Alfred Russel Wallace

[202] The statements of Huygens and of Isaac Vossius to the effect that Descartes had seen the papers of Snell before publishing his discovery, are unsupported by any direct evidence; at least none of the historians of science, so far as I am aware, have brought forward any.
— from History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3 by Henry Thomas Buckle

"Olga," he cried, his arrogant composure giving away before a deeper emotion, "although to-night I have it in my power to make and unmake empires, I would rather fail in my mission than lose you.
— from The Amateur Diplomat: A Novel by Thomas B. (Thomas Bertram) Costain

When my Lord and Saviour tells me to renounce the devil, then I do believe a devil exists, and that my own welfare now and hereafter makes it necessary that I keep away from him.
— from A Christmas Gift to the American Home and the Youth of America by N. P. (Niels Peter) Gravengaard

Booth, W. [1890] but the probability is that nine men out of ten would remember the book as “Darkest England,” and look for it under “Darkest,” and therefore it might be more useful if the entry were Darkest England, In.
— from Manual of Library Cataloguing by John Henry Quinn

Business houses are closed, buildings are decorated, excursionists are present by the thousands from neighboring cities, the roads leading from rural districts are alive with buggies, wagons and carts, all full of people, crowding into Richmond.
— from Overshadowed: A Novel by Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert) Griggs

To ascertain the fact was easy, by a direct experiment; and as the point is important, I shall relate in detail what was done by my secretary and myself on the 29.
— from New observations on the natural history of bees by François Huber