Nor, for that matter, was there in him a particle of anything at all, whether good or bad: which complete negativeness of character produced rather a strange effect.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

I could not, of course, go out and leave her, but I anxiously waited for M. Heina, who came regularly every day to see us; but on this occasion two days passed without his appearing.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

for my good master, who made me his stockman when I was quite young among the Cephallenians, and now his cattle are countless; no one could have done better with them than I have, for they have bred like ears of corn; nevertheless I have to keep bringing them in for others to eat, who take no heed to his son though he is in the house, and fear not the wrath of heaven, but are already eager to divide Ulysses' property among them because he has been away so long.
— from The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original by Homer

Even so is it that we digest our food without thinking about it, and draw our breath unconsciously in sleep; nay, even in living creatures the love of life cometh not of conscious will, but from the principles of nature.
— from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Of course, no one can take your place....
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“That's very true,” said Tom, “and that's why football and cricket, now one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or to win for oneself, and not that one's side may win.”
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

[Clark, July 18, 1806] Friday 18th July 1806 as we were about Setting out this morning two Buffalow Bulls came near our Camp Several of the men Shot at one of them.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

The negotiation was concluded very pleasantly, and Mr Swiveller was in the act of stating in flowery terms that he had no insurmountable objection to marrying anybody plentifully endowed with money or moveables, who could be induced to take him, when he was interrupted in his observations by a knock at the door, and the consequent necessity of crying ‘Come in.’
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

So, while, improved beyond a doubt, His own old song more clearly rang, Far better than themselves he sang The chants and trills of other birds; He even mock'd Grimalkin's words With such delightful humour that He gain'd the Christian name of Cat. Let Genius tell in verse and prose. How much to praise and friends it owes.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

The rhythms, the sweep, the impetuosity of impassioned contemplation not only contain in themselves a great vitality and potency, but they often succeed in engaging the lower functions in a sympathetic vibration, and we see the whole body and soul rapt, as we say, and borne along by the harmonies of imagination and thought.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata—this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come—that is to say, the southern side—by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia.”
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

… I wouldn't leave it lying about; although, of course, no one could use it without a pass also."
— from The Sisters-In-Law: A Novel of Our Time by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

This spirit of hostility appears in the somewhat contemptuous notice of Calvus and Catullus in the Satires of Horace:— Quos neque pulcher Hermogenes unquam legit, neque simius iste Nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum 5 .
— from The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil by W. Y. (William Young) Sellar

The German Reich is divided into a certain number of coal mining districts.
— from The New German Constitution by René Brunet

“You know, Allie,” she continued coaxingly, “no one could ever love you as I do.”
— from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo

Without some study of the art of composition, no one can expect to write well, or to judge the literary work of others.
— from The Verbalist A Manual Devoted to Brief Discussions of the Right and the Wrong Use of Words and to Some Other Matters of Interest to Those Who Would Speak and Write with Propriety. by Alfred Ayres

They could not overcome Coacoochee in battle, so they captured him by their lying words.
— from Through Swamp and Glade: A Tale of the Seminole War by Kirk Munroe

But Graham could not of course divine why what he as a man thought right was to Isaura as woman impossible: and he returned to his old prejudiced notion that there is no real depth and ardour of affection for human lovers in the poetess whose mind and heart are devoted to the creation of imaginary heroes.
— from The Parisians — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

But I can not, of course, encourage insubordination.
— from The Prairie Child by Arthur Stringer

And yet there was no attempt at subtlety on her part; on the contrary, no one could have an appearance of greater candor than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had come West to teach.
— from Judith of the Plains by Marie Manning