apiece, I home, and there to the office and wrote my letters, and then home, my eyes very sore with yesterday’s work, and so home and tried to make a piece by my eare and viall to “I wonder what the grave,” &c., and so to supper and to bed, where frighted a good while and my wife again with noises, and my wife did rise twice, but I think it was Sir John Minnes’s people again late cleaning their house, for it was past I o’clock in the morning before we could fall to sleep, and so slept.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces!
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Hunters and Fishers tabooed IN SAVAGE society the hunter and the fisherman have often to observe rules of abstinence and to submit to ceremonies of purification of the same sort as those which are obligatory on the warrior and the manslayer; and though we cannot in all cases perceive the exact purpose which these rules and ceremonies are supposed to serve, we may with some probability assume that, just as the dread of the spirits of his enemies is the main motive for the seclusion and purification of the warrior who hopes to take or has already taken their lives, so the huntsman or fisherman who complies with similar customs is principally actuated by a fear of the spirits of the beasts, birds, or fish which he has killed or intends to kill.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

do insufficiently &c. adv.; scotch the snake.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

She had never been staying there before, without being struck by it, or without wishing that other Elliots could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks, she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in the separate but very similar remark of Mr and Mrs Musgrove:
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

The King and Queen were very merry; and he would have made the Queen-Mother believe that his Queen was with child, and said that she said so.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

But Chun T’i held on high his Seven-precious Branch, whereupon there emerged from it thousands of lotus-flowers, which formed an impenetrable covering and stopped the sword in its fall.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

The Captain came up to me, put his finger on one spot on the chart, and said this single word.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

Louis Philippe having been severely judged by some, harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: “This one flattered the other.” H2 anchor CHAPTER IV—CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

On a huge hill, 80 Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe; And what the hills suddennes resists, winne so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night.
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

"And did you, my dear Delaware, suppose for a moment"--said Burrel, in reply, "did you imagine, from what you have hitherto seen of my conduct and sentiments, that so long as I had enough myself to offer any woman I might love, I would consider her fortune for an instant?" "No, no!
— from Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 1 by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Gan, meanwhile, had hastened back to France, in order to show himself free and easy in the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of Roncesvalles no less than three armies, which were successively to fall on the paladin in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
— from Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch

Suppose a statute compelling all ships to sail, or, if they steamed, not to exceed four miles an hour!
— from The Hills and the Vale by Richard Jefferies

We cannot always see the scar left by a heroic deed, and modesty conceals it.
— from Birds and All Nature, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 1900 by Various

A quick little smile deepened the crows'-feet at the corners of Auntie Sue's eyes, as she called again with gentle patience: “Do come and see the sunset, Judy, dear!
— from The Re-Creation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright

when she desired.—Francis Moore saith, that about eight yeares since she received a little blacke puppy from one Margaret Simson of great Catworth, which dog the said Margaret had in her bed with her, and took it thence when she gave it to the Examinate: The Examinate further saith, that the said Margaret told her, that she must keep that dogge all her life time; and if she cursed any Cattell, and set the same dog upon them, they should presently dye, and the said Margaret told her that she had named it already, his name was Pretty.
— from The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology by Margaret Alice Murray

And while we’re on the subject, I’ll tell you this much: I don’t care about selling the stuff to people like you and McCallum.
— from Dick Kent at Half-Way House by M. M. (Milo Milton) Oblinger

Vehement must the storms be which compel a soul to seek for peace from the trigger of a pistol.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac