“How melancholy is it to travel late upon any ambitious project on a winter’s night, and observe the light of cottages, where all the unambitious people are warm and happy, or at rest in their beds.”
— from Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli

The usual wars and rebellions arose, and schisms and sects fill up the archives of ten centuries with all the uninteresting precision of more civilised countries.
— from The Highlands of Ethiopia by Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir

If, indeed, the beds sloped towards the precipice, as at D , the danger would be greater; but if the reader looks to any of the examples of mountain form hitherto given, he will find that the universal tendency of the modes of elevation is to 159 cause the beds to slope away from the precipice, and to build the whole mountain in the form C , which affords the utmost possible degree of security.
— from Modern Painters, Volume 4 (of 5) by John Ruskin

But this is more than compensated by the numerous "plakkaats" or proclamations of the tariff of coins, which are to us practical indicators of the rates of exchange.
— from The History of Currency, 1252 to 1896 by William Arthur Shaw

When intelligence now reached Washington that the head of Lee's column was approaching the Upper Potomac, while the rear was south of the Rappahannock, the President wrote to General Hooker: " If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere—could you not break him? "
— from A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke

He was not like the other boys; with all the raillery and badinage that went on between them—famous in their circle; with all the unusual parade, in the open play of courtship, he had never really approached her as a lover, never laid his hand on her in tenderness, nor offered her a caress, save as a public, saucy threat.
— from The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage by Alice MacGowan

Murder, theft, human sacrifices, cannibalism, were among their usual practices, and the domestic relationships of the Society (which was large and influential, and included both sexes) are said to have been open to some criticism.
— from In the Strange South Seas by Beatrice Grimshaw

In the pursuit of these ends Greece garnered conclusions which are the undying possessions of the world.
— from Christianity and Ethics: A Handbook of Christian Ethics by Archibald B. D. (Archibald Browning Drysdale) Alexander

Trefoils of carved wood adorned the upper portions of the doors.
— from Sentimental Education; Or, The History of a Young Man. Volume 2 by Gustave Flaubert