He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold.
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Fly as they would the fugitives were too slow to escape from the active savages, and from every side in the tangled woods we heard the exultant yells, the twanging of bows, and the crash and thud as ape-men were brought down from their hiding-places in the trees.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

That is to say the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, remains identical whatever has brought about the conversation, and consequently whatever the subject-matter of it may be.
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill, Beetle at the candle, Or a fife's small fame, Maintain by accident
— from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete by Emily Dickinson

“We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o’clock, my friend and I. The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will, we hope, be incapable.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Goiti was sent back to the Bisayas, and the command of the army of Luzon fell to Salcedo, the brilliant and [ 137 ] daring grandson of Legaspi, at this time only twenty-two years of age.
— from A History of the Philippines by David P. Barrows

So year by year the Syrian damsels lamented his untimely fate, while the red anemone, his flower, bloomed among the cedars of Lebanon, and the river ran red to the sea, fringing the winding shores of the blue Mediterranean, whenever the wind set inshore, with a sinuous band of crimson. XXXI.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

At length, after five years, when Mrs. Nickleby had presented her husband with a couple of sons, and that embarrassed gentleman, impressed with the necessity of making some provision for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind a little commercial speculation of insuring his life next quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument by accident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered letter to inform him how his uncle, Mr. Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and had left him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to five thousand pounds sterling.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

During the fearful period when the Plague was raging, Pepys stuck to his business, and the chief management of naval affairs devolved upon him, for the meetings at the Navy Office were but thinly attended.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

‘You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,’ observed Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, ‘of the affection that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?’
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Fruit large, turbinate-obtuse, more or less long, considerably swelled toward its lower end; skin thick and rough, yellow-ochre clouded with green, [453] speckled with fine gray dots and stained with light brown around the calyx and stem; flesh white, semi-fine, breaking or semi-breaking, granular at center; juice abundant, very saccharine, acidulous, pleasantly perfumed; second; Sept. Louison.
— from The Pears of New York by U. P. Hedrick

Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher, declared himself to be immortal, and to be able to cure all evils.
— from Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon

No exemption will be made in this apportionment, except upon imperative reasons; and it is desirable that for good conduct the quantity be increased until faithful hands can be allowed to cultivate extensive tracts, returning to the owner an equivalent of product for rent of soil.
— from Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field: Southern Adventure in Time of War. Life with the Union Armies, and Residence on a Louisiana Plantation by Thomas Wallace Knox

With the utmost earnestness he sought to awaken trust in God, resignation to His Providence, hope in His Mercy and Bounty and the confession of our own weakness.
— from Luther, vol. 3 of 6 by Hartmann Grisar

A little while after their return to San Francisco, in 1869, Osbourne bought a house and lot for his family in East Oakland, then known as Brooklyn, at the corner of Eleventh Avenue and East 18th Street.
— from The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson by Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

[Pg 11] Had Henson been able to carry out his ideas, it is almost certain that this experimental machine would have been wrecked in its tests, and probably several more after it, seeing that he would have had to learn to control them when in flight, and remembering also that, even with aircraft as they are built to-day, many details have to be studied and improved before a successful model is evolved.
— from The Aeroplane by Claude Grahame-White

We see that the tissues of many animals, {as} certain centipedes in England, are liable, under unknown conditions of food, temperature, etc., to become occasionally luminous; just like the {illegible}: such luminosity having been advantageous to certain insects, the tissues, I suppose, become specialised for this purpose in an intensified degree; in certain insects in one part, in other insects in other parts of the body.
— from More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters by Charles Darwin

She knew no weariness, no feebleness; she grew constantly stronger and more beautiful, and the child grew stronger and more beautiful, with a likeness to her and a oneness with her which were marvelous.
— from Saxe Holm's Stories First Series by Helen Hunt Jackson

The Pisans listened respectfully while “moult leur dict de belles paroles,” but when the sermon was over they replied that never should Messer Gabriel’ be their lord again, rather would every man of them be hewn in pieces; but, they went on to say, the Marshal Boucicaut himself should be welcomed and honoured by all the citizens of Pisa, if he would accept 351 her as his fief.
— from The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History by A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson