It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the interests of those who employ him as for his own.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

Sometimes it effects a flank movement, as is often the case in contemporary drama; with a skill that is frequently sophistical, it shows up the inconsistencies of society; it exaggerates the shams and shibboleths of the social law; and so indirectly, by merely dissolving or corroding the outer crust, it again brings us back to the inner core.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

They who came among us from those Regions report, that nothing can be more deplorable or worthy of pity and commiseration, then to behold such large and great Cities totally ruinated, and intombed in their own Ashes, and that in a City adorn'd with 1000 or 2000 Fabricks, there are hardly now to be seen 50 standing, the rest being utterly demolished, or consum'd and levelled to the ground by Fire and in some parts Regions of 100 miles in length, (containing spacious Cities) are found absolutely destroyed and consumed by Fire.
— from A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies Or, a faithful NARRATIVE OF THE Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manner of Cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish Party on the inhabitants of West-India, TOGETHER With the Devastations of several Kingdoms in America by Fire and Sword, for the space of Forty and Two Years, from the time of its first Discovery by them. by Bartolomé de las Casas

Though he is the only one of our early poets who signed his works, the name was never plainly written, but woven into the verses in the form of secret runes, [32] suggesting a modern charade, but more difficult of interpretation until one has found the key to the poet's signature.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

He is the only one of the legitimate brothers that appears to have had children; as the altar shows, and the pillar placed in the Athenian Acropolis, commemorating the crime of the tyrants, which mentions no child of Thessalus or of Hipparchus, but five of Hippias, which he had by Myrrhine, daughter of Callias, son of Hyperechides; and naturally the eldest would have married first.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

I could only compare them with the noise made by hundreds of heavily laden chariots being madly driven over a stone pavement.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Friction grew from decade to decade, and, civic wisdom making no progress on either side, a number of the Lutherans and Calvinists at length formed (1608) a militant union, led by the Calvinist prince Christian of Anhalt, to defend their gains; and the Catholics, led by Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, formed another.
— from A Short History of Christianity Second Edition, Revised, With Additions by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

"Business, my dear Oliver, nothing but business.
— from The Yeoman Adventurer by George W. Gough

But most deplorable of all, her little Mariposilla was growing up in idleness, caring not for the teachings of the good Sisters at the Convent, hating persistently the drawn work, trying only to be like the Americans in disobedience and manners, forgetting each day how once it was glorious to have been born a Del Valle.
— from Mariposilla: A Novel by Mary Stewart Daggett

I was still driven by my dream of some extravagantly beautiful inspiration called love and I sought it like an area sneak.
— from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Reproduction is effected by binary fission; less commonly, after encystment, by multiple division, or by budding.
— from The Animal Parasites of Man by Fred. V. (Frederick Vincent) Theobald

Unless, then, we are prepared to admit grave mistakes in Gerlach's description, we must either assume an extraordinary failure on his part and on the part of Gyllius to notice a most interesting Byzantine monument, directly on the path of both explorers in this quarter of the city, or regret the disappearance of an ancient sanctuary that rivalled the Chora in splendour.
— from Byzantine Churches in Constantinople: Their History and Architecture by Alexander Van Millingen

But much depends on ardent and energetic Christians, who will throw their personal testimony into the conflict, and who will exert on behalf of the good cause the magic of Christian sympathy and Christian love.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Philippians by Robert Rainy