With diadem and scepter high advanced, The lower still I fall, only supreme In misery: Such joy ambition finds.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

And on the blade a head— A head in an iron helmet, With horse-hair hanging down, A shaggy head, a swarthy head, Fixed in a ghastly frown— The head of King Amulius Of the great Sylvian line, Who reigned in Alba Longa, On the throne of Aventine.
— from Lays of Ancient Rome by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

He was greatly excited, could devise nothing and would do anything, always followed Devilsdust in council, but when he executed their joint decrees and showed himself about the town, he strutted like a peacock, swore at the men and winked at the girls, and was the idol and admiration of every gaping or huzzaing younker.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Thence by coach, took up my wife, and home and out to Mile End, and there drank, and so home, and after some little reading in my chamber, to supper and to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

This melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, mosbus sonticus , or chronicus , a chronic or continuate disease, a settled humour, as [942] Aurelianus and
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

He being gone, I to church, and so home, and there comes W. Hewer and Balty, and by and by I sent for Mercer to come and dine with me, and pretty merry, and after dinner I fell to teach her “Canite Jehovae,” which she did a great part presently, and so she away, and I to church, and from church home with my Lady Pen; and, after being there an hour or so talking, I took her, and Mrs. Lowther, and old Mrs. Whistler, her mother-in-law, by water with great pleasure as far as Chelsy, and so back to Spring Garden, at Fox-hall, and there walked, and eat, and drank, and so to water again, and set down the old woman at home at Durham Yard:’ and it raining all the way, it troubled us; but, however, my cloak kept us all dry, and so home, and at the Tower wharf there we did send for a pair of old shoes for Mrs. Lowther, and there I did pull the others off and put them on, elle being peu shy, but do speak con mighty kindness to me that she would desire me pour su mari if it were to be done.....
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Ay, what will your father say to me when I die and see him again!” So the poor woman lamented and wept, while Placido became gloomier and let stifled sighs escape from his breast.
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal

Kitty demanded as she heard another loud moan.
— from Doris Force at Locked Gates; Or, Saving a Mysterious Fortune by Julia K. Duncan

Higgins seated himself carefully in a chair beside her desk and said: “Half an hour ago the doll that your niece won was lying in her top bureau drawer!”
— from The Hospital Murders by Means Davis

He stood between her and the door and she had a premonition that it would be useless to attempt to avoid him or escape.
— from Java Head by Joseph Hergesheimer

A few reminiscences of his slate-and-satchel days are scattered here and there through his writings.
— from Nathaniel Parker Willis by Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers

Enough said about descriptions and similes (though whenever I am uncertain of one I am naturally most anxious to fight for it): it is a scene not perhaps sublime, but charming, magnificent, and cheerful beyond any I have ever seen—the most superb combination of city and gardens, domes and shipping, hills and water, with the healthiest breeze blowing over it, and above it the brightest and most cheerful sky.
— from Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo by William Makepeace Thackeray

I used to explain and describe, and show how, and work and sweat, and for my pains I received behind my back curses for keeping them so long at rehearsals, and before my face stolid indifference or a thinly veiled implication that I was grossly insulting them by my minute directions.
— from Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections by Clara Morris

The door of the drawing-room closed on the retreating backs of the Lunch Club, and the President of that distinguished association, seating herself at her writing-table, and pushing away a copy of “The Wings of Death” to make room for her elbow, drew forth a sheet of the club’s note-paper, on which she began to write: “My dear Mrs. Roby—”
— from Xingu by Edith Wharton