These plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity.
— from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus

Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!” “Ah!” returned the other, sighing: “yes!
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

‘No, my dear Annie,’ returned the Old Soldier, ‘I have not quite finished.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

“But now’s my opportunity, and I will not let it slip me.” [ 77 ] So, giving orders to the driver to go on to the village and wait for me there, I took my stout walking-stick, fixed it as firmly as I could in the muddy bottom of the ditch, and reached the opposite side I scarcely know how. “Bravo! well done!” cried Francis, clapping her hands with delight.
— from Major Frank by A. L. G. (Anna Louisa Geertruida) Bosboom-Toussaint

Astrologers, too, drive a roaring trade on such days, for the greatest reliance is placed on their prophecies by both parents and students, and much money is spent by the latter, therefore, in obtaining the opinion of these impostors.
— from Corea or Cho-sen: The Land of the Morning Calm by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

Now, so far as that is what solidity means, it is clear that the quality in question involves as direct a reference to our subjective feelings as the secondary qualities of colour and sound.
— from Philosophy and Religion Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge by Hastings Rashdall

She thought she heard noises in the distance, and recalled tales of smugglers and wreckers and ghost-haunted coves.
— from The Head Girl at the Gables by Angela Brazil

We were obliged to undress, and get into the water to push the canoe off, which we succeeded in doing, and reached the opposite side in safety.
— from Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster

From that day to this he has held this unique distinction—that of being the only living person, not head of a nation, whose voice is heard around the world the moment it drops a remark; the only such voice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail, but always travels first-class—by cable.
— from Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume II, Part 2: 1886-1900 by Albert Bigelow Paine

“The boy did as directed and reached the opposite side of the lake, but instead of wishing the canoe back again he wished it a leaf and this he placed in his pocket for future use.
— from The Woodcraft Girls in the City by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

At dawn, like monster mastiffs baying, Federal cannon, with a din affraying, Roused the old Stonewall brigade, That, eagerly and undismayed, Charged amain, to be repelled After four hours' bitter fighting, Forth and back, with bayonets biting; Where in after years, the wood— Flayed and bullet-riddled—stood A presence ghostly, grim and stark, With trees all withered, wasted, gray, The place of combat night and day Like marshaled skeletons to mark.
— from Dreams and Days: Poems by George Parsons Lathrop