At times like these, minute circumstances assume giant and majestic proportions; the very swinging open of the white gate that admitted us into the forest, arrested my thoughts as matter of interest; it was an every day act, never to occur again!
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But Stendhal has devised a new treatment of the subject.
— from On Love by Stendhal

She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

Now here , we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together—for warmth, you know.’
— from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Now this, in itself, furnishes no ground for relaxing our efforts to accumulate strength to gain the first result, because an unfavourable issue is always a disadvantage to which no one would purposely expose himself, and also because the first decision, although not the only one, still will have the more influence on subsequent events, the greater it is in itself.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

Dinner was great, and most neatly dressed Dinner, an ill and little mean one, with foul cloth and dishes Discontented at the pride and luxury of the Court Discontented that my wife do not go neater now she has two maids Discourse of Mr. Evelyn touching all manner of learning Discoursed much against a man’s lying with his wife in Lent Discoursing upon the sad condition of the times Disease making us more cruel to one another than if we are doggs Disorder in the pit by its raining in, from the cupola Disquiet all night, telling of the clock till it was daylight
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Elated with victory, Marcellus took the field in person against the powers of darkness; a numerous troop of soldiers and gladiators marched under the episcopal banner, and he successively attacked the villages and country temples of the diocese of Apamea.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Nor is this ignorance confined to the unlearned rustics; it is shared by many educated people, who have travelled abroad and studied the history of Rome or Venice, Frankfort or Bruges, and yet pass by unheeded the rich stores of antiquarian lore, which they witness every day, and never think of examining closely and carefully.
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

You Dobrzynskis are not the only men here; from various other hamlets there are about two hundred of us here; so let us all consult together.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

He comes to the conclusion, therefore, that spiritual understanding, which gives perfection of soul when in com [421] bination with practice, is not acquisition of ideas but the intention of doing the will of God in the performance of good deeds, and not that of pleasure or reward.
— from A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy by Isaac Husik

But he left them in a heap on his desk and never thought of opening them.
— from Jean-Christophe, Volume I by Romain Rolland

Those above might not be able to hear or, hearing, might not be clever enough to understand, but the American was desperate, and, notwithstanding the odds against him, he determined after some little consideration to make the effort.
— from A Prince to Order by Charles Stokes Wayne

She shared all his love and all his honors; but in her highest estate she was never ashamed of her lowly days, and never tired of relating her desperate leap at Watauga; and, even in her old age, she would merrily add, "I would make it again—every day in the week—for such a husband." EDMUND KIRKE.
— from Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 by Various

An acute observer in an aeroplane circling over the particular group which awaited entrance on the north side of the tabernacle would have noticed a little cluster of femininity in the front ranks which stood out vividly from the rather dull and neutral tone of the rest of the crowd like some brilliant pattern woven into a field of grayish tinge.
— from Fresh Every Hour Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child. by John Peter Toohey

We weighed anchor about noon, and entered the opening of Kyle Rhea. Vessel after vessel, to the number of eight or ten in all, had been arriving in the course of the morning, and dropping anchor, nearer the opening or farther away, each according to its sailing ability, to await the turn of the tide; and we now found ourselves one of [Pg 161] the components of a little fleet, with some five or six vessels sweeping up the Kyle before us, and some three or four driving on behind.
— from The Cruise of the Betsey or, A Summer Ramble Among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geologist or, Ten Thousand Miles Over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland by Hugh Miller

“All is over!” said he; “the musketeers of the present day are not those of his majesty Louis XIII.
— from The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

He says: “Of the group of dynamite conspirators who stood in the dock at Newgate the other day—men whose frightful purpose was to bury London in ruins—not one was born on Irish soil.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, October 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

His dismay, therefore, was very great when, after the suit had been commenced in the courts, he learned that it was his own name and liberty which were in danger, and not those of his former partner.
— from The Modern Vikings: Stories of Life and Sport in the Norseland by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen