The young brown reeds on the moor waved to and fro in feathery billows; the forest boughs were hidden in a watery mist, and still light and darkness followed each other, still came the silence after the roar, while the corn and the blades of grass lay beaten down and swamped, so that it seemed impossible they could ever raise themselves again.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.
— from Aesop's Fables by Aesop

Mean while I began my farming with great eagerness, and that very winter planted these groves that please you so much.—As for the neighbouring gentry, I had no trouble from that quarter during my first campaign; they were all gone to town before I settled in the country; and by the summer I had taken measures to defend myself from their attacks.—When a gay equipage came to my gates, I was never at home; those who visited me in a modest way, I received; and according to the remarks I made on their characters and conversation, either rejected their advances, or returned their civility—I was in general despised among the fashionable company, as a low fellow, both in breeding and circumstances; nevertheless, I found a few individuals of moderate fortune, who gladly adopted my stile of living; and many others would have acceded to our society, had they not been prevented by the pride, envy, and ambition of their wives and daughters.—Those, in times of luxury and dissipation, are the rocks upon which all the small estates in the country are wrecked.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they believed him at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography of his expeditions.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

But for such a foregone conclusion he would have recognised in this statement the expression of my conviction that the present state of scientific evidence, instead of sanctioning the idea that the descendants of the primitive type or types of Foraminifera can ever rise to any higher grade, justifies the ANTI-DARWINIAN influence, that however widely they diverge from each other and from their originals, THEY STILL REMAIN FORAMINIFERA.")...
— from Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2 by Charles Darwin

[8] Philosophy, physics and mathematics felt at this period that they had a common enemy in sensationalism and sophism, and they formed an alliance against this common enemy, rather than as happened later, dissipate their energies in intestinal welfare.
— from Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept by Benedetto Croce

We have hitherto considered, that mimicry could only occur when a comparatively scarce and much persecuted species obtained protection by its close external resemblance to a much more abundant uneatable species inhabiting its own district; and this rule undoubtedly prevails among the great majority of mimicking species all over the world.
— from Darwinism (1889) An exposition of the theory of natural selection, with some of its applications by Alfred Russel Wallace

The camera exactly replaced the ammunition magazine on a Lewis gun.
— from America's Munitions 1917-1918 by Benedict Crowell

With Senator Bell voted Caminetti, Estudillo, Rush, Thompson and Walker, who were ordinarily against the passage of bad bills.
— from Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 by Franklin Hichborn

These trees are seldom more than twelve or fifteen feet in height, and with its long legs and neck the Giraffe can easily reach the appetizing twigs and leaves on the broad flat top of the tree.
— from Birds and Nature, Vol. 10 No. 4 [November 1901] by Various

OTHER CHAMPIONS OF THE AIR Among other champion flyers of the allied forces Major Bishop of the British is credited with seventy-two victories; Lieutenant Coppens of Belgium, wounded during the late fighting, and with a leg amputated, holds the record of thirty-six victories; Lieutenant Baracchini the Italian flyer has thirty victories to his credit; Eddie Rickenbacker the American ace is responsible for twenty-four enemy victims, and Edward Parsons, another American flyer is credited with eight official victories and seven more unconfirmed.
— from America's War for Humanity by Thomas Herbert Russell