I then gave her half-a-crown for the bath and six francs for herself; she kept the half-crown, but gave me back the six francs with silent contempt.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial laws receive a sanction from artificial revelations.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Heaving a sigh, he wrung his hands until the joints cracked, and spouted out the following verses, "Hither, hither quickly gather, pathic companions boon; Artfully stretch forth your limbs and on with the dance and play!
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

Sketches , p. 198. ↑ 8 “Pontianak” appears to be synonymous with “Mati-anak,” which may perhaps be a shorter form of Mati bĕranak (“stillborn”); indeed, one of the charms against the Pontianak which I collected, commenced with the words, “ Pontianak mati bĕranak .”
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

CHAPTER X Natásha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was now nursing.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Of course, no two villages are quite alike; each has many distinguishing features; but a strong family likeness is observable.
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

Over a door in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all round his head.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

It contains these lines—] POSTSCRIPT BY A SINCERE FRIEND The illness of our excellent Miss Halcombe has afforded me the opportunity of enjoying an unexpected intellectual pleasure.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The bullets and shells flew over the soldiers' heads, and into their heads—into their bodies and limbs; but still they pressed forward.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

“Ferguson believes that he put the dose of aconitine in the glass of water which Jimmie asked for,” explained Kent, and would have continued his remarks, but a scream from Barbara startled him.
— from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln

Our poor fellows behaved nobly, but they were helpless; the position which, if entrenched and manned by a sufficient force, should have been impregnable, was untenable, and those of the troops who survived the last onslaught ran for their lives as Englishmen have seldom been known to do.
— from With Rifle and Bayonet: A Story of the Boer War by F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton

The unbroken sunshine; the clear sky, which I had not seen for so long; a town in which the houses are not put in eternal mourning by coal smoke, and stood out bright and sharp from the atmosphere, made me feel at home again, and I walked down to the harbour to take my last farewell of the sea.
— from Tour in England, Ireland, and France, in the years 1826, 1827, 1828 and 1829. with remarks on the manners and customs of the inhabitants, and anecdotes of distiguished public characters. In a series of letters by a German Prince. by Pückler-Muskau, Hermann, Fürst von

After some negotiation, Mrs. Murphy agreed to take Tom as a boarder, furnishing her with lodging, breakfast and supper, for a dollar and a half a week.
— from Tattered Tom; or, The Story of a Street Arab by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

Below Wrigley rugged ranges border both sides of the river at a distance from the shore-line of ten or twelve miles, and we come to Roche Trempe-l'eau or "The Rock by the Riverside," an outcrop of Devonian limestone rising on the right bank a sheer fifteen hundred feet above the river.
— from The New North by Agnes Deans Cameron

Many times they haue taken of the fishes, and do finde in their bellies all such filth as hath beene throwne out of their shippe in many dayes sailing, and whole sheepes heads with hornes and all.
— from The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, Volume 2 (of 2) by Juan González de Mendoza

A couple of blows with an axe would cut through the supporting creepers; and the platform, falling, would shower down an avalanche of huge stones on the heads of enemies gathered close under the sheer bank, and safe from the rifles of the defenders above.
— from Life in an Indian Outpost by Gordon Casserly

It was now nearly June, and they had been at sea for two months.
— from Highland Ballad by Christopher Leadem

One day, she lay asleep naked; a rain-drop falling upon her breast, she conceived and bore a son, from whom are descended the people who built the "Casas Grandes."
— from The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day by Alexander Francis Chamberlain