But drag me from this country; and my power of self control vanishes, nor can I answer for the violence my agony of grief may lead me to commit."
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The survivor, Dandolo, was poor, but until his death, he also gave Casanova a monthly provision of six sequins.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Then comes a Moorish pavilion of Spain with nondescript ornaments, the bulbous domes and pinnacles supporting the flags of yellow and red—of barbaric taste, color and significance.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878 by Various

Yet all of her crew, and many people on shore, realized that the war canoe was not showing a prize-taking gait.
— from The High School Boys' Canoe Club by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

A novelty in silver represents an English walnut (exact size), "All in a nutshell," which contains powder, puff, mirror, miniature scent bottle, and pincushion; a silver peanut contains a "magic" pencil or small vinaigrette; thimble cases, bangles, tape measures, etc., come in nut designs; a small lace-trimmed handkerchief may be folded and slipped inside an English walnut shell.
— from Bright Ideas for Entertaining by Linscott, Herbert B., Mrs.

The monks rarely lived on good terms with the secular clergy; for the former as confessors and mass priests often seriously interfered with the rights and revenues of the latter.―Besides the many monkish orders, with their strict seclusion, perpetual vows and ecclesiastically sanctioned rule, we meet with organizations of a freer type such as the Humiliati of Milan, consisting of whole families.
— from Church History, Volume 2 (of 3) by J. H. (Johann Heinrich) Kurtz

It was a true son of France who first had the persistence of courage and the endurance of imagination to enter the continent and see the gates close behind him—Jacques Cartier, a master pilot of St. Malo, commissioned of his own intrepid desire and of the jealous ambition of King Francis I to bring fresh tidings of the mysterious "square gulf," which other Frenchmen, Denys and Aubert, may have entered a quarter of a century earlier, and which it was hoped might disclose a passage to the Indies.
— from The French in the Heart of America by John H. (John Huston) Finley

But although he could not move, he was not too far gone to hear her great cry, and the rush of multitudes of soft feet, followed by the sounds of something heaved up against the rock; after which came a multitudinous patter of stones falling near him.
— from The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

On the right hand rises the Hot Mountain, with the springs issuing at its foot; on the left, the Cold Mountain, which is little more than a confused and mighty pile of stones; and the view in front is terminated by a high point of land, which makes down gradually into the valley, and separates the creek into two forks, of nearly equal size.
— from Scenes and Adventures in the Semi-Alpine Region of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Could any more perfect or secure method of disposing of a body be devised by the most ingenious murderer?
— from The Vanishing Man A Detective Romance by R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman