Being entirely void of Reason, he pursues no Point either of Morality or Instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being so.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

Often making a figure in history, they have been ever in the situation of men striving against both wind and tide, who distinguish themselves by their desperate exertions of strength, and their persevering endurance of toil, but without being able to advance themselves upon their course by either vigour or resolution.
— from Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott

Drove by Champs Elysées, to Champ de Mars, Porte de Neuilly (where such destruction from bombs, etc., vault of railway crashed in,—trees in splinters, etc.)
— from The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake by Graham Travers

At first sight it may appear bold to undertake a vindication of that narrative, or to bring it within the compass of history by detaching from it what has been embellishment, what has been perhaps even wilful invention, and bringing out in its perfect completeness a history corroborated on all sides by every variety of research.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865 A Monthly Eclectic Magazine by Various

At length the street is cleared and patrolled, for respectability must be protected, not that there has been either violence or robbery.
— from London's Underworld by Thomas Holmes

Fourthly, Being entirely void of reason, he pursues no point either of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being so.
— from Essays and Tales by Joseph Addison

He surrounded himself with a brilliant court, brought back the discarded titles of nobility, named the members of his family princes and princesses, and sought to banish every vestige of republican simplicity.
— from Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century by Charles Morris

Those shells which are destitute of a natural polished surface, may be either varnished or rubbed with a mixture of tripoli powder and turpentine applied by means of a wash-leather, after which fine tripoli alone should be used, and, finally, a little olive oil, the surface being brought up with the chamois leather as before.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson

At this epoch, then, we are to understand that the constantly increasing centrifugal force, having gotten the better of the non-increasing centripetal, loosened and separated the exterior and least condensed stratum, or a few of the exterior and least condensed strata, at the equator of the sphere, where the tangential velocity predominated; so that these strata formed about the main body an independent ring encircling the equatorial regions:—just as the exterior portion thrown off, by excessive velocity of rotation, from a grindstone, would form a ring about the grindstone, but for the solidity of the superficial material: were this caoutchouc, or anything similar in consistency, precisely the phænomenon I describe would be presented.
— from Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar Allan Poe

This work seemed advisable so that the future failure of paint on any one panel, which might be thought due to faulty wood, could be either verified or refuted by a reference to the series of photographs made of the bare panels.
— from Paint Technology and Tests by Henry A. (Henry Alfred) Gardner