As I have above stated, these canoes are hollowed out of the trunks of trees, after the manner of our bakers' troughs: in this country they are used for coasting; and we had to pay Pedro d'Avila ten doubloons for the voyage.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.
— from Common Sense by Thomas Paine

He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Many’s the time Annie’s said to me: ‘Mark my words, Albert, I wouldn’t wonder if the police was to come after her one of these days.’
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

I was ashamed, and also lost; and it was while wandering the woods hunting for myself that I found a deserted log cabin and had one of the best meals there that in my life-days I have eaten.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

I fear a mist, and fly from smoke as from the plague: the first repairs I fell upon in my own house were the chimneys and houses of office, the common and insupportable defects of all old buildings; and amongst the difficulties of war I reckon the choking dust they made us ride in a whole day together.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Above the Memnonium are tombs of kings in caves, and hewn out of the stone, about forty in number; they are executed with singular skill, and are worthy of notice.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

He was ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, and had an irresistible charm about him, one of those men in whom we excuse the greatest excesses as the most natural things in the world.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

The oldest controversies are hauled out of the dust with which time and neglect had covered them.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in Germany and France, and till lately in England and Scotland), is in some places practised with the avowed intent to procure rain for the next year’s crops.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Emboldened by the ease with which he had obtained the burghers’ acceptance of the Kalfvel , {220} he imposed by means of the new corporation a host of onerous taxes which had never been heard of before, notably a heavy duty on wheat, and obtained from his subservient magistrates a legal decision that the seventh denier in all town revenues belonged by right to the Sovereign.
— from The Story of Bruges by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

Some of its dark damp cells are hewn out of the solid rock beneath the surface of the lake.
— from Foot-prints of Travel; Or, Journeyings in Many Lands by Maturin Murray Ballou

We'd better clear all hands out of the river-bed."
— from Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II by Rudyard Kipling

And in it he placed the close of the divine Parker, and many beautiful undergraduates were delighting their tender minds upon it playing cricket with one another; and a match was being played and two umpires were quarrelling with one another; the one saying that the batsman who was playing was out, and the other declaring with all his might that he was not; and while they two were contending, reviling one another with abusive language, a ball came and hit one of them on the nose, and the blood flowed out in a stream, and darkness was covering his eyes, but the rest were crying out on all sides: "Shy it up."
— from Cambridge Pieces by Samuel Butler

He swore he would discover all, either through the duchess or through the Widow Chupin; and he ordered Otto to procure a costume for him such as was generally worn by the habitues of the Poivriere.
— from The Honor of the Name by Emile Gaboriau

And they all laughed again, and took home the child to the palace, where, when she was washed and combed, and had one of the Princess’s frocks given to her, she looked as handsome as Angelica, almost.
— from The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray

Above the line the tropical vegetation was in all its glory: ferns and plantains waving in the moist air; cedars, tamarinds, gum trees, orange trees striking their roots among the clefts of the crags, and hanging out over the abysses below them.
— from The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses by James Anthony Froude

“I s’pose now, that if one of your miners came along here, and set off his little dynamite cartridge right at the base of this same cliff, there’d be something showing after that, a hole in the rock that somehow we just can’t seem to find now?” was the next suggestion on the part of the stout chum; who liked to think up all sorts of strange ideas that often bordered on the ridiculous; though he had been known to give his comrades a hint once or twice that had led to good results in their hands.
— from The Broncho Rider Boys Along the Border Or, The Hidden Treasure of the Zuni Medicine Man by Frank Fowler

I can see her now, a small, slight figure in her cape, and little black bonnet tied under her chin, and holding one of those quaint little ruffled sunshades to keep the sun out of her eyes.
— from A Portrait of Old George Town by Grace Dunlop Peter