These were frequent, deep, and prolonged; they bore upon a matter more important than five shillings.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

2 added to doubled adjectives: pretend to be.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Thus, that Sophia saw, and that Western did not see, the plain symptoms of love in Jones can be no wonder, when we consider that the idea of love never entered into the head of the father, whereas the daughter, at present, thought of nothing else.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Concerning the philosophers who think that the separation of soul and body is not penal, though Plato represents the supreme Deity as promising to the inferior gods that they shall never be dismissed from their bodies.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

The fact that all animals, brute and human alike, pursue Pleasure, is some presumption of its being in a sense the Chief Good; (“There must be something in what most folks say,”) only as one and the same nature or state neither is nor is thought to be the best, so neither do all pursue the same Pleasure, Pleasure nevertheless all do.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Jones now walked downstairs neatly drest, and perhaps the fair Adonis was not a lovelier figure; and yet he had no charms for my landlady; for as that good woman did not resemble Venus at all in her person, so neither did she in her taste.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

But how is it that English statesmen will proclaim as harmless the more and more manifest advance of their northern rival; how disguise and palliate the mischievous menace of that rival's aims?
— from Sketches of Central Asia (1868) Additional chapters on my travels, adventures, and on the ethnology of Central Asia by Ármin Vámbéry

As there was a great demand for these valuable writings, about twenty six years ago; so these printed copies of them were compared with his own manuscript copy now in my hand, carefully revised, and then printed, in a large 4to of 641 pages, by Robert Fleming, Printer at Edinburgh, in the year 1735, to which was prefixed a short account of his Life, chiefly taken from the large memoirs of his Life, that the Reverend Mr. Robert M'Ward, some time minister of the gospel at Glasgow, wrote, in a long letter to the Reverend Mr. James Coleman, Minister of the gospel at Sluys in Flanders, who translated Mr. Binning's Sermons into High Dutch, and printed them for the benefit of the Christian congregations in Holland and Flanders.
— from The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning by Hugh Binning

DISRAELI AND PEEL These were his theoretic convictions, while outwardly he amused himself in the high circles which his Parliamentary notoriety had opened to him.
— from The Earl of Beaconsfield by James Anthony Froude

It had been suggested in the Stockbridge Committee of Correspondence, Inspection, and Safety that the adoption of such a tariff would tend to relieve the present distress and promote trade.
— from The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion by Edward Bellamy

After a day of idleness and depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed to some relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to the extremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left.
— from A Student in Arms: Second Series by Donald Hankey

The park and house of Glaire Tower were already devastated and pillaged, the lawns ravined as by a storm, the trees felled, and the buildings invaded.
— from The Downfall (La Débâcle): A Story of the Horrors of War by Émile Zola

Every tree was full of birds, variegated with an infinity of colours, but destitute of song; others, of a more homely and more European appearance, diverted us with a variety of wild notes, in a stile of music still distinct and peculiar to Africa; as different in the composition from our linnet and goldfinch, as our English language is to that 74 of Abyssinia: Yet, from very attentive and frequent observation, I found that the sky-lark at Masuah sang the same notes as in England.
— from Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 3 (of 5) In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773 by James Bruce

The surface of the ground was covered by spinifex, which rendered our walking both difficult and painful; this plant diffuses a strong aromatic odour, which quality it possesses, as it were, to counterbalance the annoying effects of its prickly foliage.
— from Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 1 by Philip Parker King

Vast editions of tracts and leaflets were scattered broadcast throughout the land, and a staff of carefully instructed speakers was maintained to itinerate through the rural districts and preach the gospel of free corn in tavern, market- place, and town hall.
— from Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century by James Richard Joy