The throb of fifty or a hundred million steam horse-power, doubling every ten years, and already more despotic than all the horses that ever lived, and all the riders they ever carried, drowned rhyme and reason.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

Did Darryl ever tell you about Van?
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Imaginaos un hombre de más de setenta años, enjuto de carnes, de elevada talla y algo encorvado por la edad.
— from Novelas Cortas by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

I do not know exactly how much or how little you can do, but I understand that your object is to slay men by millions in order to raise up another world of which you will be the absolute king, as you were of some past empire that has been destroyed, either through your agency or otherwise.
— from When the World Shook Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

And then— then —you go and let this infatuation run away with you—you forget all your principles—you forget your mother, and all you owe her—and you go and ask this girl to marry you—whose father is our personal and political enemy—a political adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I hold sacred—or ought to hold sacred!"
— from The Coryston Family A Novel by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

A vast audience is assembling there for English Authors ancient, present, and future, our People doubling every twenty Years; and this will demand large and of course profitable Impressions of your most valuable Books.
— from Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2) A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings by Wiliam Cabell Bruce

Partook of a soldier's supper, made our bed neath the starry canopy of heaven, and laid down, ending the year as we began it, by sleeping.
— from An Artilleryman's Diary by Jenkins Lloyd Jones

After this the shepherds hasted back to the city, and bare with them the dead, even the youth Almo and the old man Galæsus, and cried for vengeance to the Gods and to the king.
— from Stories from Virgil by Alfred John Church

What the uses of this timber are, for chests, and other utensils, harps, and divers other musical instruments (it being a very sonorous wood, and therefore employ’d for organ-pipes, as heretofore for supporters of vines, poles, rails, and planks, (resisting the worm, moth, and all putrefaction to eternity) the Venetians sufficiently understood; who did every twenty year, and oftner (the Romans every thirteen) make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy:
— from Sylva; Or, A Discourse of Forest Trees. Vol. 1 (of 2) by John Evelyn

Whar' do 'ee think you are?
— from The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West by Gustave Aimard

The Electronic Frontier Foundation did exist ten years ago, but its coverage of intellectual property issues was only episodic.
— from The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle

The Craig gang had been destroyed earlier this year, and these men had probably established a new ferry.
— from The Romance of the Colorado River The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

"How you dare, scum of de earth that you are," cried he, [T] "how you dare make cry the signorina?"
— from The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 by Various