Among the influences that have helped to shape my own creed and inspire my own life, have been the beautiful lives and noble characters of Japanese officers, students and common people who were around and before me.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

It did not make much difference to me which way we were going; I had only half a biscuit left, and no chance of getting more.
— from A Chapter of Adventures by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

Yet with all these defects, with every prejudice or superiority of taste and style against him, what school has produced a work (M. Angelo's Creation of Adam, and the Death of Ananias by Raffaelle excepted,) which looks not pale in the superhuman splendour that irradiates his conception of Christ before Pilate, unless it be the raising of Lazarus by Lievens, a name comparatively obscure, whose awful sublimity reduces the [131] same subject as treated by Rembrandt and Sebastian of Venice, to artificial parade or common-place?
— from The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3) by Henry Fuseli

chimed several voices, accompanied with brutal laughter, and noisy clapping of hands, with other tokens of unanimous approval.
— from The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 2 of 6 by Eugène Sue

The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage has been lost, and no copy of it remains.
— from Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Complete by Filson Young

Mr. Matthew Arnold, for instance, protests against it, triumphantly citing out of the author for whom he stands up what certainly would read like the utterance of a mind both large and noble, could one rid one’s self of the feeling that Chateaubriand in writing it had his own case chiefly in view, as follows: It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many other dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that the best works of imagination are those which draw the most tears....
— from French Classics by William Cleaver Wilkinson

The apartment was spacious, but low; a narrow casement opened on one side, at the distance of six feet from the floor, and admitted the moonbeams, by which the captives were enabled to conduct their examination.
— from Calavar; or, The Knight of The Conquest, A Romance of Mexico by Robert Montgomery Bird

But we must further consider, that even generous children are apt to expect generosity equal to their own from their companions; then come tacit or explicit comparisons of the value or elegance of their respective gifts; the difficult rules of exchange and barter are to be learned; and nice calculations of Tare and Tret are entered into by the repentant borrowers and lenders.
— from Practical Education, Volume I by Richard Lovell Edgeworth

and his successors to have resisted an illegal encroachment of power in the king's ordinary council, while it had in truth been exercising an ancient jurisdiction, never restrained by law and never complained of by the subject.
— from View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Vol. 3 by Henry Hallam