By name, ere plunging to its bed profound; Name lost ere by Forlì its waters run— Above St. Benedict with one long bound, 100 Where for a thousand [492] would be ample room, Falls from the mountain to the lower ground; Down the steep cliff that water dyed in gloom We found to fall echoing from side to side, Stunning the ear with its tremendous boom.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

On the face of the thing, nothing could be more absurd as a mode of jollification, in a little American town, with its wooden architecture, on a hot night in the midst of summer, than building a roaring fire to make the air still hotter and endanger the surrounding houses.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Richard Hackney, one of the sheriff’s in the year 1322, and Alice his wife, were there buried, as Robert Fabian writeth, saying thus:—“In the year 1497, in the month of April, as labourers digged for the foundation of a wall, within the church of St. Marie hill, near unto Belinsgate, they found a coffin of rotten timber, and therein the corpse of a woman whole of skin, and of bones undissevered, and the joints of her arms pliable, without breaking of the skin, upon whose sepulchre this was engraven:—‘Here lieth the bodies of Richard Hackney, [188] fishmonger, and Alice his wife.’”
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

‘What do they call a bed a rope for?’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘Bless your innocence, sir, that ain’t it,’ replied Sam.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

He bore a reputation for wisdom rather than skill—leaving the active practice of medicine to his assistants and younger contemporaries—and was much sought for in matters of consultation.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

"Miss Tulliver," he said, with bitter incisiveness, "has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and integrity.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

In order then that disease might not quickly destroy us, and lest our mortal race should perish without fulfilling its end—intending to provide against this, the gods made what is called the lower belly, to be a receptacle for the superfluous meat and drink, and formed the convolution of the bowels, so that the food might be prevented from passing quickly through and compelling the body to require more food, thus producing insatiable gluttony, and making the whole race an enemy to philosophy and music, and rebellious against the divinest element within us.
— from Timaeus by Plato

Caesar did also afterward bestow it on Herod, that it might not again become a receptacle for those robbers that had come against Damascus.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Such a bequest places property in the custody of the Church; and it may never be sold or disposed of in any way, but all revenue from it must be devoted to the purchase of Masses for the souls in purgatory.
— from Carmen Ariza by Charles Francis Stocking

To see him, to hear his voice and footsteps, meet his gallant and kindly eyes, to watch him come and go about the house, to listen to his clever and sympathetic talk, would constitute rapture, but a rapture from which she shrank in terror.
— from Adrian Savage: A Novel by Lucas Malet

As the new army was to be raised by the authority of the state governments, he urged on them the necessity of bringing a respectable force into the field early in the spring, with all the earnestness which was suggested by his situation, and zeal for the service.
— from The Life of George Washington: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions by John Marshall

"I feel," she said slowly, "as if I were pursued by a remorseless fate."
— from The Lamp in the Desert by Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell

We were for the time victorious, but it was time to beat a retreat, for the enemy were already filling Leipzig; the gates of Halle and Grimma were forced, and that of Peters-Thau delivered up by our friends the Badeners and our other friends the Saxons.
— from The Conscript: A Story of the French war of 1813 by Erckmann-Chatrian

[Pg 21] with tears and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother, and relatives from their race and from their tribe.’
— from Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3) by Richard Bagwell

He was burned at Rome for heresy on the 17th February, 1600.
— from Theological Essays by Charles Bradlaugh