Although this version may be pronounced very nearly to fulfil the promise set forth in its title page, of being “as literal as possible,” still, from the singular inelegance of its style, and the fact of its being couched in the conversational language of the early part of the last century, and being unaccompanied by any attempt at explanation, it may safely be pronounced to be ill adapted to the requirements of the present age.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

I was brought back upright by the strong hands behind me, which steered me like a marionette.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

For the Church cannot judge of Manners but by externall Actions, which Actions can never bee unlawfull, but when they are against the Law of the Common-wealth.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Nothing of this had been unobserved by Mr. Squeers, who, so long as the attention of the company was fixed upon other objects, hugged himself to think that his son and heir should be fattening at the enemy’s expense.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Don't you be uneasy, Bella, my child; don't you be doubtful.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

I had no right, I knew very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite help it.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The castle and domain of Arja half a century ago belonged to the crown, but had been usurped by the Purawats, from whom it was wrested by storm about fifteen years back by the Saktawats, and a patent sanctioning possession was obtained, on the payment of a fine of £1000 to the Rana.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

My darling Frederick must positively be an eldest son; and—and do ask Papa to bring us back his account in Lombard Street, will you, dear?
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

He asked the lad if he would [ Pg 160] like to ride home behind him, and receiving an affirmative reply, took the boy up behind on the horse’s back.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

The latter was used by Chaucer, and with a little care in reading can readily be understood by any educated person at the present day, though it contains many words nationalized from the French.
— from The Interdependence of Literature by Georgina Pell Curtis

Orders for 90,103 freight cars to be used by the American Expeditionary Forces were also placed with American contractors.
— from America's Munitions 1917-1918 by Benedict Crowell

And in the same letter in which these words occur—an extraordinary epistle to Matthew Arnold, asking him to embody the writer's ideas in an essay—he extends his Quaker inheritance so far as to make it a cloak for humour, a humour, as he says, in "a sense beyond, perhaps, that in which it ever has been understood, but which, it may be, it is reserved to you to reveal to men."
— from Shelburne Essays, Third Series by Paul Elmer More

He was more successful in comedy than in tragedy, and he used the stage, as it had been used by the writers of the old Attic comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political warfare.
— from The Roman Poets of the Republic, 2nd edition by W. Y. (William Young) Sellar

I suppose my wretchedness, and youthfulness, and folly softened him again, and he said, very gently, "I don't mean to be unkind, but it is best for you to go.
— from Richard Vandermarck: A Novel by Miriam Coles Harris

At this stage there is actually in use among the people $16,700 where "B," the legitimate factor, and his kind, the people, suppose there is but $10,000—$10,000 which is recorded, known and legal, being used by the legitimate factors, "B" and The Bank , and $6,700 which is unrecorded and unknown to any but "C" and The Bank , being used by the illegitimate Private Thing "C."
— from Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated by Thomas William Lawson

After having been united by the mayor in the little municipal house the pair were made one by the cure, in his turn, in the modest house of God.
— from Original Short Stories — Volume 09 by Guy de Maupassant

Occasionally when I went to see her she had gone out visiting, and I was left to dream away the evening in the old window waiting for her return, or, if I knew which way she came, loitering in the street in case she should be unattended by the maid who was usually sent to meet or to fetch her when her father did not go himself.
— from Miss Grantley's Girls, and the Stories She Told Them by Thomas Archer

Maumee's Town, a village of thirty or forty huts, where a considerable slave-trade was carried on, until broken up by the colonists under Governor Ashman.
— from Journal of an African Cruiser Comprising Sketches of the Canaries, the Cape De Verds, Liberia, Madeira, Sierra Leone, and Other Places of Interest on the West Coast of Africa by Horatio Bridge