For convenience, the most familiar image should come first; and this is probably that of the comet, or meteoric streams, like the Leonids and Perseids; a complex of minute mechanical agencies, reacting within and without, and guided by the sum of forces attracting or deflecting it.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

Bull fights are now prohibited in the Federal District—embracing a territory around the City of Mexico, somewhat larger than the District of Columbia—and they are not an institution in any part of the country.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

He dared not venture into the complexities of chemistry, or microbes, so long as this child's toy offered complexities that befogged his mind beyond X-rays, and turned the atom into an endless variety of pumps endlessly pumping an endless variety of ethers.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

But she had no time to enforce her compassionate entreaties, and, not daring to disobey the second command of Montoni, she left the corridor, to attend him.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

St. Paul knew no distinction between Jew and Greek, rich and poor, but taught that to be justified by God is a privilege which can be claimed not by birth but by faith; and what St. Paul enforces by stern arguments which convince our minds, St. Luke instils by the sweet parables and stories which convince our hearts.
— from The Books of the New Testament by Leighton Pullan

The earl's conduct so roused the indignation of the butchers of the city—a class of men scarcely less powerful than their brethren the fishmongers—that they made no secret that the price of meat would be raised still more if the debasement of the currency was carried out as proposed.
— from London and the Kingdom - Volume 1 A History Derived Mainly from the Archives at Guildhall in the Custody of the Corporation of the City of London. by Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson) Sharpe

The Investigator being thus found incapable of further service, various plans were suggested, and discussed with the governor, for prosecuting the voyage; but that which alone could be adopted without incurring a heavy expense to government, was to employ the armed vessel Porpoise; and as this ship was too small to carry all my complement, with the necessary provisions, to put the remainder into the Lady Nelson, under the command of my second lieutenant.
— from A Voyage to Terra Australis — Volume 2 Undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803, in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner by Matthew Flinders

The sight coming on me suddenly, like an illustration of my fears, I could scarce be done with examining it and drinking in discomfort.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 11 by Robert Louis Stevenson

If the wise woman had but pinched her, she would have shown herself an abject little coward, trembling with fear at every change of motion so long as she carried her.
— from A Double Story by George MacDonald