Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question would be,—"Young man, what sort of dreams have you?"
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

Now, with all this overwhelming mass of historical evidence before us, "piled mountain high," tending to prove the truth of the proposition that Christianity is the offspring and outgrowth of ancient Judean Essenism, we feel certain that no sophistry, from interested charlatans or stereotyped creed worshipers, can stave off or obliterate the conviction in unprejudiced minds, that the proposition is most amply proven.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

943 Afranius places him at the head of all the comic writers, declaring, in his Compitalia, Terentio non similem dices quempiam.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

Crowding the narrow streets in front of them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing; and wonderful cripples, distorted out of all semblance of humanity, almost;
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Margaret's quickly-adjusted spirit-lamp was the most efficacious contrivance, though not so like the gypsy-encampment which Edith, in some of her moods, chose to consider the nearest resemblance to a barrack-life.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Rispuose adunque: <che tu non speri s'appressa un sasso che de la gran cerchia si move e varca tutt'i vallon feri,
— from Divina Commedia di Dante: Inferno by Dante Alighieri

“I felt sure you would come round to it,” said the elder man with the coolness that nothing seemed to shake.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Madame Grisi, who sympathizes with him, refuses to uplift her voice, that being the case; the new singeress, Frezzolini, does not please at all; and the new singer, Rouconi, isn't allowed by his wife to sing with any woman but herself, and she is a perfect dose to the poor audience.
— from Records of Later Life by Fanny Kemble

“Well! I wouldn’t try to crack the nut, solve the riddle, of what’s behind that queer-shaped crevice, Stud,” he said.
— from Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl by Isabel Hornibrook

The washing of the soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic vegetation, that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no longer fit for the habitation of man.
— from The Earth as Modified by Human Action by George P. (George Perkins) Marsh

The spirits of Mercury differ entirely from those of our Earth, for the spirits of our Earth concern themselves not so much about [immaterial] things as about worldly, corporeal, and terrestrial things, which are material.
— from Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There by Emanuel Swedenborg

In Giorgione, the creator of idyllic genre painting in the fourteenth century, and in Titian, of whom Rossetti himself was in due course the natural successor, they found all the mystic sensuousness of the new Paganism in a setting which, to adapt a well-worn phrase, revealed instead of concealing the soul 50 within.
— from Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement by Esther (of Hampstead) Wood

Mr. Williams, in a state of charitable thaw, now softest of the soft, like most hard men when once softened, suggested this idea to the Mayor.
— from What Will He Do with It? — Volume 03 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Since the attempt of Turgesius to subvert the religion of the country, they never showed the slightest inclination to repeat it; hence they were left in quiet possession of the places which they occupied on the sea-board, and gradually came to embrace Christianity themselves.
— from The Irish Race in the Past and the Present by Augustus J. Thébaud

He considered his emotions, but there was no comfort there, no stimulus.
— from Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson

Again, I drove out the swarm, looked out the queen, and returned her to the old stock, compelling the new swarm to raise one.
— from Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained by M. (Moses) Quinby