I let the whole down with a smash on the cabman, and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I realised what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window and prepared to dodge out of the confusion.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

I have been cut off from all news of my relatives by marriage for some time past.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Which makes so much more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, who being lieutenant to King Francis I. in his ultramontane army, infinitely favoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king’s bounty for the marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as to the rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and even his own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be so terrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics that were spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V., and to our disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecies were so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured out upon return of greater, when the prognostics came to pass, so certain they made themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to those of his acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs that he saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends he had in that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his own misfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at that time.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Thus, under colour of friendship, Antonius enticed Artavasdes, King of Armenia; then, having caused him to be bound in heavy chains and shackled, at last put him to death.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

But our warrior athletes must be wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and climate.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Neither condition is enviable, for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend, and as time advances he becomes known, and lays up in store for himself isolation in crabbed age when life is on the wane: so that, whether his children or friends are alive or not, he is equally solitary.—Worthy of honour is he who does no injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any; the first may count as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rulers of the injustice of others.
— from Laws by Plato

According to Hegel the whole earth, (an old nucleus-thought, as in the Vedas, and no doubt before, but never hitherto brought so absolutely to the front, fully surcharged with modern scientism and facts, and made the sole entrance to each and all,) with its infinite variety, the past, the surroundings of to-day, or what may happen in the future, the contrarieties of material with spiritual, and of natural with artificial, are all, to the eye of the ensemblist , but necessary sides and unfoldings, different steps or links, in the endless process of Creative thought, which, amid numberless apparent failures and contradictions, is held together by central and never-broken unity—not contradictions or failures at all, but radiations of one consistent and eternal purpose; the whole mass of everything steadily, unerringly tending and flowing toward the permanent utile and morale , as rivers to oceans.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

The cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs; and experience has proved, that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honor.
— 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

Of the unfathomable depth and infinity of the sky one can only form a conception at sea and on the steppe by night when the moon is shining.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and genius.
— 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

All the while I could not help thinking of Dante and his condemnation of Florence, and its "hard, malignant people," the people who still had something in them of "the mountain and rock" of their birthplace:—" E tiene ancor del monte e del macigno. "
— from Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions Volume 2 by Frank Harris

Like the whole coast of Flanders and of Holland, it seemed drawn by a geometrical rule, not a cape, cove, or estuary breaking the perfect straightness of the design.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

He was hardly conscious of fatigue as he pressed across the sandy waste.
— from The Bushranger's Secret by Clarke, Henry, Mrs.

Producing under such pressure or at least under the compulsion of filling a certain number of columns every week with witty comment on current events inevitably tends to careless writing.
— from Six Major Prophets by Edwin E. (Edwin Emery) Slosson

This is the first condition of a living morality as well as of vital religion, that the soul shall find a true centre out from and above itself, round which it shall revolve.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

“Ay—to Norlaw,” said the Mistress, ignorant of all this complication of feeling and with a softening in her voice; “Norlaw himself, that’s gane, was near of kin to your mother; your grandfather, auld Melmar, was good to us and ours; my sons are your nearest kinsmen in these parts, and I’m their mother.
— from The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

The western white pine’s needles grow in clusters of five and are from one and a half to four inches long.
— from American Forest Trees by Henry H. Gibson

There was a cry of fright, and in leaping back, the man near the top of the ladder knocked over the one below, and he in turn the next, so that it was like when a ball hits the King Pin and the others are sent sprawling.
— from Frontier Boys in Frisco by Wyn Roosevelt

But at this moment the train man shouted "Newburyport," as if there were not a minute to be lost, and the good soul gathered [14] her possessions in a great hurry, dropping her purse again twice, and letting fall bits of broken sentences with it from which Betty could gather only "The fog come in," and "coast o' France," and then, as they said good-by, "'t was so divertin' ridin' along that I took no note of stoppin'."
— from Betty Leicester: A Story For Girls by Sarah Orne Jewett

77 -8 —— —— —— letters to Mr. A. Wiltshire: on the Liberal Government, ii. 162 ; on necessity for increased wages, 165 —— —— —— letter to an unknown correspondent, on fauna and flora of Borneo district, and Dyaks, i. 53 —— Annie (A.R. Wallace's wife), ii.
— from Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2 by Alfred Russel Wallace