Of what is call'd eternity, to stare, And know no more of what is here, than there;— Don Juan grew a very polish'd Russian— How we won't mention, why we need not say: Few youthful minds can stand the strong concussion Of any slight temptation in their way; But his just now were spread as is a cushion Smooth'd for a monarch's seat of honour; gay Damsels, and dances, revels, ready money, Made ice seem paradise, and winter sunny.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

By and by it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

She did this because it was her nature—she asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the worth-whileness of life in which destruction and death ran riot.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Only two of the Misses Darcy were there to meet her, in Effie May's limousine, their manner nicely adjusted between melancholy, importance, and the empressement due a distinguished relative returning from foreign parts.
— from Why Joan? by Eleanor Mercein Kelly

“I dare, and do refuse,” replied the captain, taking his pipe out of his mouth.
— from The Phantom Ship by Frederick Marryat

As fast as the hounds arrived upon the bank they smelt at the turpentine and backed away with a sneeze; and when they were all in plain view, running about with their heads in the air or going through such contortions as dogs will when they unexpectedly encounter something disagreeable, a deafening roar rang through the woods, and every one of the hounds dropped in his tracks dead or wounded.
— from Rodney, the Overseer by Harry Castlemon

The louring-sky becomes dark with clouds of a bloody hue, and the sun, shorn of its rays and its glory, seems to float among them like a round ball of glowing purple, while the whole air becomes dense and dusty, rendering respiration out of doors almost an impossibility.
— from The Romance of War; or, The Highlanders in Spain, Volume 2 (of 3) by James Grant

Papa, sitting in his chair by the fire day after day, reading, reading, would sometimes entertain the most ridiculous fantasies.
— from Shaman by Robert Shea

At his death Connaught was once more plunged in civil war, and after some delay and difficulty Roderic resumed the government.
— from An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 by Mary Frances Cusack

At noon the country dropped suddenly to the northward, and we descended a deep rocky ravine, in which we soon found water and grass.
— from Journals of Australian Explorations by Francis Thomas Gregory

After breakfast, when everything belonging to his pantry is cleaned and put in its place, the furniture in the dining and drawing rooms requires rubbing.
— from The Book of Household Management by Mrs. (Isabella Mary) Beeton

How it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads!
— from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain