He insisted that he had been climbing the ridges all day, and put out his moccasins to show how worn they were, not knowing that they were scorched from the fire, as he had slept on until sundown.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Even if there be no need, there is no harm in the state being furnished with horses and arms and all other insignia of war; and we will undertake to see to and order this, and to send round to the cities to reconnoitre and do all else that may appear desirable.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Much of this tale she concealed from Raymond; nor did she confess, that repulse and denial, as to a criminal convicted of the worst of crimes, that of bringing the scythe of foreign despotism to cut away the new springing liberties of her country, would have followed her application to any among the Greeks.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall—drip, drip, drip—upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

They gain, in return, the obligation on the mother country to repel aggressions directed against them; but, except when the minor community is so weak that the protection of a stronger power is indispensable to it, reciprocity of obligation is not a full equivalent for non-admission to a voice in the deliberations.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

Between ourselves, Edmund,” nodding significantly at his mother, “it was cutting the roses, and dawdling about in the flower-garden, that did the mischief.”
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

In the nature of things not a brigade on the held was in a condition to repel a determined attack.
— from Pickett or Pettigrew? An Historical Essay by W. R. (William R.) Bond

The North and South German bear the same relation to each other as beer and schnaps to wine, as bilberries to grapes, as butter and cheese to roast and dessert, as mountains and levels, as leagues and miles.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 398, November 14, 1829 by Various

Here I come to reclaim a deserter, and I am seized even bodily, and against my will all but hurried into a profession of faith.
— from Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert by John Henry Newman

He’s brought them, and left the Ruritanians with the King; that’s because he wants to commit the Ruritanians as deep as he can.”
— from The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

She crossed the room and drew aside the curtain that covered the double-latticed windows.
— from The Sowers by Henry Seton Merriman