But they were only thoughts.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Moreover he thought that his horses would not be willing to mount the opposite bank, because the elephants would at once fall upon them and frighten them both by their aspect and trumpeting; nor even before that would they remain upon the inflated hides during the passage of the river; but when they looked across and saw the elephants they would become frantic and leap into the water.
— from The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great by Arrian

The synthetical unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all cognition, which I do not merely require in order to cognize an object, but to which every intuition must necessarily be subject, in order to become an object for me; because in any other way, and without this synthesis, the manifold in intuition could not be united in one consciousness.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

Mrs. Cole, by the way, could not have given me a greater mark of her regard than in managing for me the choice of this young gentleman for my master of the ceremonies: for, independent of his noble birth and the great fortune he was heir to, his person was even uncommonly pleasing, well shaped and tall; his face marked with the small-pox, but no more than what added a grace of more manliness to features rather turned to softness and delicacy, was marvellously enlivened by eyes which were of the clearest sparkling black; in short he was one whom any woman would, in the familiar style, ready call a very pretty fellow.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

We lost too much money this mart by being too wenchless.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

I having paid the reckoning, which come to almost L4., we parted: my company and William Batelier, who was also with us, home in a coach, round by the Wall, where we met so many stops by the Watches, that it cost us much time and some trouble, and more money, to every Watch, to them to drink; this being encreased by the trouble the ‘prentices did lately give the City, so that the Militia and Watches are very strict at this time; and we had like to have met with a stop for all night at the Constable’s watch, at Mooregate, by a pragmatical Constable; but we come well home at about two in the morning, and so to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Besides the walls and towers, the remains of many other buildings attest the former grandeur of Dara; a considerable part of the space within the walls is arched and vaulted underneath, and in one place we perceived a large cavern, supported by four ponderous columns, somewhat resembling the great cistern of Constantinople.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

"People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," says Charles Kingsley; "that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back to with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

“Now hark thou, Sir Verner, what I to thee say: I beg thou wilt sing me a pretty love lay.”
— from Signelil, A Tale from the Cornish, and Other Ballads by George Borrow

His Sundays were devoted to talks in his office, where were gathered a few hearers, some because they agreed with him, and others because they were interested in hearing what he had to offer.
— from Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 by George S. (George Sewall) Boutwell

But there was a cloud on Fancy’s horizon now.
— from Under the Greenwood Tree; Or, The Mellstock Quire A Rural Painting of the Dutch School by Thomas Hardy

" Jeanie was at first tempted to turn up the parable of the good Samaritan, but her conscience checked her, as if it were a use of Scripture, not for her own edification, but to work upon the mind of others for the relief of her worldly afflictions; and under this scrupulous sense of duty, she selected, in preference, a CHAPTER of the prophet Isaiah, and read it, notwithstanding her northern' accent and tone, with a devout propriety, which greatly edified Mrs. Dalton.
— from The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 2 by Walter Scott

But they won't, you will surely see to that."
— from The Bride of Dreams by Frederik van Eeden

Stone, the detective (an operative, Lanyard rightly inferred, of the American Secret Service, loaned to the British in order to keep the burglary out of police records and newspapers), had wandered out into the garden that glowed with young April sunlight beyond the windows.
— from The False Faces Further Adventures from the History of the Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance

Ruby came up to them before there was time for an answer.
— from Harper's Round Table, December 31, 1895 by Various

Oldroyd came at intervals professionally, but there was a peculiar distance observed between him and Lucy, who treated him with petulant angry resentment, and he was reserved and cold.
— from The Star-Gazers by George Manville Fenn

But the winding stream, the shifting channel, the swift current, the frequent snag and sand-bar made navigation down-stream dangerous and navigation upstream incredibly slow: the heavier vessels took three months for the trip from New Orleans to Louisville.
— from The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways by Oscar D. (Oscar Douglas) Skelton