Now, as we see that many places and cities have docks and harbours lying very convenient for the city, while those who frequent them have no communication with the citadel, and yet they are not too far off, but are surrounded by walls and such-like fortifications, it is evident, that if any good arises from such an intercourse the city will receive it, but if anything hurtful, it will be easy to restrain it by a law declaring and deputing whom the state will allow to have an intercourse with each other, and whom not.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

One was a moonlight picture, in the background a lowly dwelling, and in front, partly shadowed by a tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youthful figures, male and female.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

When the time came, he went out into the garden to the heap of tan, and waited for the King's daughter; but he became still more weary than on the day before, and lay down and slept as soundly as if he had been a stone.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

That portion of Country below as low down as the enterance of Cah-wah na ki ooks River is a broken rich Country.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

It was understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display about it as possible.
— from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

You have seen a hand, a foot, or a head, cut off from the rest of the body, and lying dead at a distance from it.
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The man in the mask stopped before a low door and drew out a key; but before he placed it in the lock he turned around to see if he was being followed.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

And when he entered into the chapel that was but a little and a low thing and had but a little door and a low, then the entry began to wax so great, and so large and so high as though it had been of a great minster or the gate of a palace.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

Often, as I still lay at the bottom and kept no more than an eye above the gunwale, I would see a big blue summit heaving close above me; yet the coracle would but bounce a little, dance as if on springs, and subside on the other side into the trough as lightly as a bird.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Hiram blinked a little doubtfully at Mr. Gammon, and his rope and gander, and probably, under ordinary circumstances, would have flouted that gentleman.
— from The Skipper and the Skipped: Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul by Holman Day

He always began in the middle of his story and worked out both ways, which made it difficult to take notes, besides at the best it was but a legend, dim and indistinct.
— from Looking Back: An Autobiography by Merrick Abner Richardson

Berkelman and Lambert discovered and settled Elizabeth Creek and Listowel Downs.
— from Early Days in North Queensland by Edward Palmer

This man knelt behind a locked door and heard himself execrated by the man he was trying to save; heard the first kindly impulse he had yielded to in months distorted into a desperate plan to rob the cursing maniac.
— from The Helpers by Francis Lynde

This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is as near as I shall ever come to déshabillé in public; and perhaps it will do something to help towards a better vision of the man, if it gives no more than a partial view of a piece of his back, a little dusty (after the process of tidying up), a little bowed, and receding from the world not because of weariness or misanthropy but for other reasons that cannot be helped: because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock ticks with that horrid pitiless solemnity which you must have observed in the ticking of the hall clock at home.
— from Notes on My Books by Joseph Conrad

The material is briefly and lucidly developed, and a recapitulation brings back the first section, with the woodwinds assuming the theme over a web of string pizzicati.
— from Serge Prokofieff and His Orchestral Music by Louis Leopold Biancolli

And the same distinction applies with even greater force to the alleged connection between a logical disjunction and a physical reaction.
— from History of Modern Philosophy by Alfred William Benn

"The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars are let down all at once to the financial banditti.
— from The Alaskan by James Oliver Curwood

As I stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, I knew that as surely as death was coming, it would be welcome.
— from The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The party was to be a large dinner, and he asked me to be one of the company.
— from Memoirs of Life and Literature by W. H. (William Hurrell) Mallock