A history or a work of science may be and sometimes is literature, but only as we forget the subject-matter and the presentation of facts in the simple beauty of its expression.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

You see my blind and straddle it like a man.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Then his journeymen having stitched it up did jag it and pink it at the bottom, and so it looked like a pan to fry chestnuts.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

There is, at any given moment, a best path for every man; the thing which, here and now, it were wisest for him to do; whatsoever forwards him in that, were it even in the shape of blows and spurnings, is liberty; whatsoever hinders him, were it tremendous cheers and rivers of heavy wet, is slavery.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

So that whereas, when Hannibal crossed the Rhone, he had thirty-eight thousand infantry, and more than eight thousand cavalry, he lost nearly half in the pass, as I have shown above; while the survivors had by these long continued sufferings become almost savage in look and general appearance.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

In a small antechamber, into which several doors opened, and which was lighted by a small iron lamp, they met a second interruption from the waiting-maid of Rowena, who, saying in a tone of authority, that her mistress desired to speak with the Palmer, took the torch from the hand of Anwold, and, bidding him await her return, made a sign to the Palmer to follow.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

That is entrancing still; but beyond and above these strange forms and pictured fancies, I now discern a deeper mystery of thought; not pure and abstract thought, flashes of insight, comforting grace, kindled desires, but rather that more complex thought that, through a perception of strange forms, a waving robe of scarlet, a pavement bright with jewels, a burning star, a bird of sombre plumage, a dark grove, breathes a subtle insight, like a strain of unearthly music, interpreting the hopes and fears of the heart by haunted glimpses and obscure signs.
— from The Thread of Gold by Arthur Christopher Benson

A few years later, she struck the Rock Island Bridge and sank in less than five minutes, a total loss.
— from Old Times on the Upper Mississippi The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863 by George Byron Merrick

At all events, he took Nellie's hand, and, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, laid it on her mother's, saying: "Only the day after that on which I saw her first, I told her that I would never ask for this dear hand until her mother was by to give it.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

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— from The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by da Vinci Leonardo

In 1598 he defeated an army of 5000 men on the Blackwater and slew its leader, Sir Henry Bagenal, and most of his Pg 347 followers.
— from A History of England Eleventh Edition by Charles Oman

It proved, however, to be not a revolver, but a heavy, leather-covered billy about six inches long.
— from Four Afoot: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the Highway by Ralph Henry Barbour

147. Lion with a forked tail, from a brass at Spilsby in Lincolnshire, 1391.
— from Heraldry for Craftsmen & Designers by Hope, W. H. St. John (William Henry St. John), Sir

Now because Confess we must there's naught beside the sum, There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus

The last wheelbarrow, trundled by a sturdy Irish lad, had in it a clothes-basket with a blue-check apron tied neatly over it.
— from A Modern Madonna by Caroline Abbot Stanley

One takes the vitality of the other; neither has sufficient nourishment, and both are started in life stunted and incomplete.
— from Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics by B. G. (Benjamin Grant) Jefferis