Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

And it seems to have been a merited punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French revolution, that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her destiny.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

on the back and more particularly on the top of the neck the wool is intermixed with a Considerable proportion of long Streight hair.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

But I cannot, by all my power of thinking, extract from the concept of a thing the concept of something else, whose existence is necessarily connected with the former, but I must call in experience.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Beyond all measure proud of this commission, Newman Noggs took up his post, in the square, on the following evening, a full hour before the needful time, and planting himself behind the pump and pulling his hat over his eyes, began his watch with an elaborate appearance of mystery, admirably calculated to excite the suspicion of all beholders.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

If, under the same circumstances, a man could act now one way and now another, it would be necessary that his will itself should have changed in the meantime, and thus that it should lie in time, for change is only possible in time; but then either the will would be a mere phenomenon, or time would be a condition of the thing-in-itself.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

As the issue has one-half of the blood of each parent, and the blood of each of these may be made up of a variety of fractional mixtures, the estimate of their compound in some cases may be intricate, it becomes a mathematical problem of the same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals; as in these, therefore, the algebraical notation is the most convenient and intelligible.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

And I remember there were two little maids of fourteen and eleven, Ruhannah and Hannah, sweet and fresh as wild June roses, who showed me the tow cloth for our army which they were spinning, and blushed at my praise of their industry.
— from The Hidden Children by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

On the 13th of March 1781, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, the great astronomer was engaged in examining the small stars near H in the constellation Gemini, with a seven-foot telescope, bearing a magnifying power of two hundred and twenty-seven times.
— from The Story of the Herschels, a Family of Astronomers Sir William Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Caroline Herschel by Anonymous

The first stage of picture-writing, as considered in the present chapter, was the representation of a material object in such style or connection as determined it not to be a mere portraiture of that object, but figurative of some other object or person.
— from Picture-Writing of the American Indians Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822 by Garrick Mallery

Yet he did not talk with them, beyond a mere passing of the time of day, but went about nervously from showcase to counter and repeated the journey.
— from The Diamond Cross Mystery Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story by Chester K. Steele

To bring this question into open view is the ulterior aim of this book, and more particularly of this appended Epilogue.
— from Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; A Study in Ethics, with an Epilogue Addressed to Theologians by Clark S. (Clark Smith) Beardslee

Universal mental cultivation is the enduring basis and majestic pillar of their structure.
— from The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 8, April, 1835 by Various

For some days they met under strong restraint; only by stolen glances and sighs, by a momentary pressure of the hand, or a few slightly murmured words, could they give expression to their rapture and their passion.
— from Berlin and Sans-Souci; Or, Frederick the Great and His Friends by L. (Luise) Mühlbach