To save a man, to spare a father’s feelings, or a mother’s sensibility, is not to do a good action, but a simple deed of humanity.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

and that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole town!
— from The Youth's Companion Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 by Various

The principal fête of the year is in the month of August, and then the grand priest known as Toua proceeds to one of the sanctuaries I have just mentioned, and there sacrifices, in due order, one after the other, a duck, a goose, a bull, and a horse.
— from From Paris to Pekin over Siberian Snows A Narrative of a Journey by Sledge over the Snows of European Russia and Siberia, by Caravan Through Mongolia, Across the Gobi Desert and the Great Wall, and by Mule Palanquin Through China to Pekin by Victor Meignan

Neither shall we accompany Charley up the south branch of the Saskatchewan, where his utmost expectations in the way of hunting were more than realised, and where he became so accustomed to shooting ducks and geese, and bears and buffaloes, that he could not forbear smiling when he chanced to meet with a red-legged gull, and remembered how he and his friend Harry had comported themselves when they first met with these birds on the shores of Lake Winnipeg!
— from Snowflakes and Sunbeams; Or, The Young Fur-traders: A Tale of the Far North by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

The ocean was of as deep and glorious a blue as ever I had beheld it in the middle of the Atlantic.
— from The Death Ship: A Strange Story, Vol. 3 (of 3) by William Clark Russell

Cook meant to say, “instant dismissal,” but she was excited, and, giving a defiant look round, she went on,— “I don’t care, and I says it’s a shame, not alone to keep the poor boy locked up like a prisoner, and badly fed, as does a growing boy no end of harm; and I will say it, mum,” she continued, turning to my mother, “as dear and good a boy as ever came into this school, but to go and say he was a thief, as he couldn’t be, sir.
— from Burr Junior by George Manville Fenn

With many there he had danced and golfed and bridged a hundred times.
— from The Long Lane's Turning by Hallie Erminie Rives

[161] now depending, (as great a business as I have ever undertaken).
— from Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794) Volume 2 (of 2) by Edward Gibbon

He knows very little of the human heart who imagines we cannot do a good action; but, alas!
— from The Disowned — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Now, if it was difficult to transport a handful of attendants across Siberia for the first simple voyage, what was it to convoy this rabble composed of self-important scientists bent on proving impossible theories, of underling officers each of whom considered himself a czar, of wives and children unused to such travel, of priests whose piety took the extraordinary form of knouting subordinates to death, of Cossacks who drank and gambled and brawled at every stopping place till half the lieutenants in the company had crossed swords in duels, of workmen who looked on the venture as a mad banishment, and only watched for a chance to desert?
— from Vikings of the Pacific The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward by Agnes C. Laut

In times of great scarcity, when nothing better is to be had than seeds of Spurrey, ( Spergula arvensis ,) from the fields, these seeds, after being dried, are ground and baked, along with a small proportion of corn.
— from Lachesis Lapponica; Or, A Tour in Lapland, Volume 1 by Carl von Linné