[1614] that melancholy men and sick men conceive so many fantastical visions, apparitions to themselves, and have such absurd apparitions, as that they are kings, lords, cocks, bears, apes, owls; that they are heavy, light, transparent, great and little, senseless and dead (as shall be showed more at large, in our [1615] sections of symptoms), can be imputed to nought else, but to a corrupt, false, and violent imagination.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Certain Spaniards, coasting the sea in quest of their mines, landed in a fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled country, and there made to the inhabitants their accustomed professions: “that they were peaceable men, who were come from a very remote country, and sent on the behalf of the King of Castile, the greatest prince of the habitable world, to whom the Pope, God’s vicegerent upon earth, had given the principality of all the Indies; that if they would become tributaries to him, they should be very gently and courteously used”; at the same time requiring of them victuals for their nourishment, and gold whereof to make some pretended medicine; setting forth, moreover, the belief in one only God, and the truth of our religion, which they advised them to embrace, whereunto they also added some threats.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna’s portrait greatly fascinated him, was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev’s disquisitions upon art, and could forget about Vronsky’s painting.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

We are paying arrears of debt which we incurred by our sad neglect, and we could be about no better business." There are many poor children in the slums of New York, Mr. Millionaire, who could go into your drawing-room and carry away from its rich canvases, its costly furnishings, a vision of beauty which you never perceived in them because your esthetic faculties, your finer sensibilities, were early stifled by your selfish pursuit of the dollar.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

He assumed such a comical face and voice that the distribution of the bottles of stout took place amid general merriment.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce

Both kinds are strong: first, because the rubble itself is of close texture and solid, unable to suck the moisture out of the mortar, but keeping it in its moist condition for a very long period; secondly, because the beds of the stones, being laid smooth and level to begin with, keep the mortar from falling, and, as they are bonded throughout the entire thickness of the wall, they hold together for a very long period.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

whence it had been an article of commerce by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians from a very early period.]
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

We have already mentioned the Takshak Mori [or Maurya] as being lords of Chitor from a very early period; and but a few generations after the Guhilots supplanted the Moris, this palladium of Hindu liberty was assailed by the arms of Islam.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

It is a very strange legend, and one directly bearing on the Psychological Theory; for this dead man, who is a dead priest, has a palace in a realm of enchantment, and to enter his country one must have a white fairy-wand with which to strike ‘in the form of a cross’ two blows upon the rock concealing the entrance.[84] M. Paul Sébillot records from Upper Brittany a tradition that beneath the sea-waves there one can see a subterranean world containing fields and villages and beautiful castles; and it is so pleasant a world that mortals going there find years no longer than days.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

FIVE-FRANC PIECE CHAPTER XVIII—MARIUS’ TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS CHAPTER XIX—OCCUPYING ONE’S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS CHAPTER XX—THE TRAP CHAPTER XXI—ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS CHAPTER XXII—THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO VOLUME IV.—SAINT-DENIS.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The pile of tapestry carpets is usually left uncut; but sometimes it is cut, forming a velvet pile.
— from Jacquard Weaving and Designing by T. F. Bell

As a matter of fact, the bulk of the subscriptions came from a very few sources.
— from Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific by Stuart Daggett

I could fill a volume with grateful memories of the regiments in India.
— from When We Were Strolling Players in the East by Louise Jordan Miln

‘I have just come from a very different scene.’
— from Robert Elsmere by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

The neighboring playmates used to watch for those letters almost as eagerly as the family, and probably they envied the Lee children sometimes when their father came for a visit, wearing some new honor or title.
— from The Child's Book of American Biography by Mary Stoyell Stimpson

But this attempt at deception continues for a very short period, for they soon become either delirious or insensible, and generally are unable to move.
— from Visits to Monasteries in the Levant by Robert Curzon

343 Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Fawcett at, vii, 33 , 76 -91, 102 -7, 128 , 228 , 267 , 304 ; its Christmas festivities, 86 -88, 128 .
— from A Beacon for the Blind: Being a Life of Henry Fawcett, the Blind Postmaster-General by Winifred Holt

Waiting," she said, and clasped her knees with her intent look again, swaying a little to and fro in her content, as if that which she waited for had already come, full and very desirable.
— from Hilda: A Story of Calcutta by Sara Jeannette Duncan

She knows that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity to her head.
— from The Thirteen by Honoré de Balzac