Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night, though it was not yet six o’clock; and they had before them a long evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold in the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting in their studies over a book.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"At last they came to a part of the mountain completely broken up by barrancas and ramblas, of vast depth, and shagged with rocks and precipices.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

A much more serious objection has been urged by Bronn, and recently by Broca, namely, that many characters appear to be of no service whatever to their possessors, and therefore cannot have been influenced through natural selection.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Miss Mary's i' th' house, and Mester Burge 'ull be back anon; he'd be glad t' ha' ye to supper wi'm, I'll be's warrand.”
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

Nevertheless, a gun-shot between a Frenchman and an Englishman can be understood; but between a Frenchman and a Frenchman, ah! that wounds Reason, that wounds France, that wounds our mother!"
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

The first—I am speaking of the saver and not of the spender—is not always bad; he may indeed in some cases be utterly bad, but, as I was saying, a good man he never is.
— from Laws by Plato

That year I made my den in a cave which I found high up on a mountain-side, and which had evidently been used by bears at some time or other, [119] though not for the last year or two.
— from Bear Brownie: The Life of a Bear by Harry Perry Robinson

Thenceforth, between the heavy columns of regular troops which on every side watched and threatened them, the continued assaults of the Cossacks who hung around them in clouds by day and by night, rushing on every detached party like the Mamelukes of Egypt, disturbing every bivouac, breaking up bridges before, and destroying every straggler behind them, to the terrible severity of the climate, the frost, the snow, the wind—the sufferings of this once magnificent army were such as have hardly been equalled in the world's history.
— from Military Career of Napoleon the Great An Account of the Remarkable Campaigns of the "Man of Destiny"; Authentic Anecdotes of the Battlefield as Told by the Famous Marshals and Generals of the First Empire by Montgomery B. Gibbs

In my opinion life became limited in its duration, not because it was contrary to its very nature to be unlimited, but because an unlimited persistence of the individual would be a luxury without a purpose.
— from Essays Upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems Authorised Translation by August Weismann

In one corner there was the remnant of a stove, braced up by bricks and stones, but no fire was burning therein, though the day was cold.
— from Ester Ried Yet Speaking by Pansy

Immediately after his return to England Lyell was compelled, with the assistance of his companion Murchison, to defend their conclusions concerning the excavations of valleys by rivers from a determined attack of Conybeare, who was backed up by Buckland and Greenough; the old geologists endeavoured to prove that the river Thames had never had any part in the work of forming its valley [49] .
— from The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science by John W. (John Wesley) Judd

Without much semi-scientific pedantry, the whole science may be understood by balancing a half-crown on the top of the forefinger of your right hand.
— from Knowledge for the Time A Manual of Reading, Reference, and Conversation on Subjects of Living Interest, Useful Curiosity, and Amusing Research by John Timbs

You will not forget the honour of your country, that must, from your behaviour, take its title in the estimation of the world to glory or to shame; and you will, with the deepest attention, reflect, that if the peaceable mode of opposition recommended by us, be broken and rendered ineffectual, as your cruel and haughty ministerial enemies, from a contemptuous opinion of your firmness, insolently predict will be the case, you must inevitably be reduced to choose, either a more dangerous contest, or a final, ruinous, and infamous submission.
— from The Life of George Washington: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions by John Marshall

Nordenfeldt used the fundamental ideas upon which these two boats were based, added to them some improvements of his own as well as some devices which had been used by Bushnell, and finally launched in 1886 his first submarine boat.
— from Aircraft and Submarines The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day Uses of War's Newest Weapons by Willis J. (Willis John) Abbot

His improvements in the Blodgett and Lerow machine included a table to hold the cloth horizontally rather than vertically (this had been used by Bachelder and Wilson also), a yielding vertical presser foot to hold the cloth down as the needle was drawn up, and a vertically reciprocating straight needle driven by a rotary, overhanging shaft.
— from The Invention of the Sewing Machine by Grace Rogers Cooper

And she concluded by recommending me to regulate my diet, and fall back upon bran bread and hickory ashes.
— from Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 2 (of 2) by Robert Montgomery Bird