By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste, that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes—a brief space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very tone of a visitation from eternity.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I could only look forward to an immediate catastrophe, such a catastrophe as not even the most vivid imagination could have thought of.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

[ The slaughter of all the Midianite women that had prostituted themselves to the lewd Israelites, and the preservation of those that had not been guilty therein; the last of which were no fewer than thirty-two thousand, both here and Numbers 31:15-17, 35, 40, 46, and both by the particular command of God; are highly remarkable, and show that, even in nations otherwise for their wickedness doomed to destruction, the innocent were sometimes particularly and providentially taken care of, and delivered from that destruction; which directly implies, that it was the wickedness of the nations of Canaan, and nothing else, that occasioned their excision.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Although for two months threats and inducements had been held out to secure a full attendance at the December conference at New Echota, there were present when the proceedings opened, according to the report of Schermerhorn himself, only from three hundred to five hundred men, women, and children, out of a population of over 17,000.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Prudence and circumspection are necessary even to the best of men.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of interest.'
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

And then the covenant made with Abraham particularly sets forth the land of Canaan, and names eleven tribes in it from the river of Egypt even to the great river Euphrates.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

The distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained, and the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the roof; but the Majesty of England slept on, undisturbed, and the calf did the same, it being a simple creature, and not easily troubled by storms or embarrassed by sleeping with a king.
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

They may be faint and weak; they may be very vague cognizers of the same realities which other conscious states cognize and name exactly; they may be unconscious of much in the reality which the other states are conscious of.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

The trees and branches of the shrubs were inhabited by a colony of monkeys and parrots, making the most abominable chattering and noise, especially the former, who seemed to consider the travellers as direct intruders upon their legitimate domain, and who were to be deterred from any further progress by their menaces and hostile deportment.
— from Travels of Richard and John Lander into the interior of Africa, for the discovery of the course and termination of the Niger From unpublished documents in the possession of the late Capt. John William Barber Fullerton ... with a prefatory analysis of the previous travels of Park, Denham, Clapperton, Adams, Lyon, Ritchie, &c. into the hitherto unexplored countries of Africa by Robert Huish

Dawn was breaking over Santiago de Cuba, and nearly everybody thought it was too late for the attempt to be made that morning.
— from The Boys of '98 by James Otis

On the contrary, the lands and the roads are owned and controlled by private corporations, and not even the government can use these roads for purposes of transportation without compensation.
— from Monopolies and the People by D. C. Cloud

In the huge sandwich which the volume constitutes, the biographical chapters are not even the thinnest slices of meat, they are at the most the mustard.
— from British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV July and October, 1871 by Various

The crown, although hereditary in the house of Solomon, is elective by will at each decease, and the eldest born can assert no exclusive title to succession by right of primogeniture.
— from The Highlands of Ethiopia by Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir

Since that melancholy day, the geyser basin has been railed off, in such a manner that no one can approach near enough to incur the slightest danger.
— from In the Strange South Seas by Beatrice Grimshaw

[Pg 370] the four chariots and the little guard drew rein before the gate of the great college, and Nabonidus entered the institution between two long lines of white-robed priests, who gave the salute to Patêsi when he passed.
— from Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy by Margaret Horton Potter

To Beatrix, Calyste’s fury of love and his mad action came as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all natures, even the most stubborn.
— from Beatrix by Honoré de Balzac

While they were on their way to Lincoln Chambers a newsboy entered the street-car crying the evening papers.
— from The Undercurrent by Robert Grant

Altogether, it was an equipment in caravan style, somewhat the same as for a journey in the desert, the traveller carrying with him provision and everything necessary for his comfort, as not expecting to procure anything on the road, nor to sleep under a roof during the whole journey.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2) by John L. Stephens