Now, my little book, (Though void of all these paintings that may make It with this or the other man to take) Is not without those things that do excel What do in brave but empty notions dwell. {5} 'Well, yet I am not fully satisfied, That this your book will stand, when soundly tried.'
— from The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come Delivered under the similitude of a dream, by John Bunyan by John Bunyan

The silken flag waved to and fro, on the shield itself a double eagle was displayed, and a big boot; the youngest lads carried the "welcome," and the chest of the workmen's guild, and their shirt-sleeves were adorned with red and white ribbons; the elder ones carried drawn swords, each with a lemon stuck on its point.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

One could there distinguish, very well, though cleverly united with the principal building by long galleries, decked with painted glass and slender columns, the three Hôtels which Charles V. had amalgamated with his palace: the Hôtel du Petit-Muce, with the airy balustrade, which formed a graceful border to its roof; the Hôtel of the Abbe de Saint-Maur, having the vanity of a stronghold, a great tower, machicolations, loopholes, iron gratings, and over the large Saxon door, the armorial bearings of the abbé, between the two mortises of the drawbridge; the Hôtel of the Comte d’ Etampes, whose donjon keep, ruined at its summit, was rounded and notched like a cock’s comb; here and there, three or four ancient oaks, forming a tuft together like enormous cauliflowers; gambols of swans, in the clear water of the fishponds, all in folds of light and shade; many courtyards of which one beheld picturesque bits; the Hôtel of the Lions, with its low, pointed arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron gratings and its perpetual roar; shooting up above the whole, the scale-ornamented spire of the Ave-Maria; on the left, the house of the Provost of Paris, flanked by four small towers, delicately grooved, in the middle; at the extremity, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, properly speaking, with its multiplied façades, its successive enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excrescences, with which the fancy of the architects had loaded it during the last two centuries, with all the apses of its chapels, all the gables of its galleries, a thousand weathercocks for the four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose conical roof, surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those pointed caps which have their edges turned up.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

The civil and military officers, when they were admitted into the service of the palace, obtained an humble rank and a moderate stipend; they ascended by seniority to a station of affluence and repose; the annual pensions, of which the most honorable class was abolished by Justinian, amounted to four hundred thousand pounds; and this domestic economy was deplored by the venal or indigent courtiers as the last outrage on the majesty of the empire.
— 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

“Oh, yes,” said Davy, eagerly wriggling down on his knees, “I can say them now all right.
— from Anne of the Island by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

But when she saw his dazzling eye wax dim, And drooping like an eagle's with clipt pinion, She then resolved to send him on a mission, But in a style becoming his condition.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

The rule of the people means that when the people's employees do not do the people's work well and honestly, the people may discharge them exactly as a business man discharges employees who do not do their work well and honestly.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

"For all that," answered Don Quixote, "I would rather have just now a quarter of bread, or a loaf and a couple of pilchards' heads, than all the herbs described by Dioscorides, even with Doctor Laguna's notes.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

When the document eventually was delivered, it was found, as far as my memory serves me, to be framed in classical Chinese.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

His dark eyebrows were drawn close together, and I noticed that his boots were clogged with sand.
— from The Betrayal by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

Close to Villa Rica, during the night of the 22d of January, the gang suddenly attacked the diamond escort, who defended themselves bravely, but were all massacred, with the exception of one man, who, seriously wounded, managed to escape and bring the news of the horrible deed.
— from Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne

And yet I am told that this Doctrine must not be resisted or called in question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and for the prevention of schism and sectarian byways!—Let the man who holds this language trace the history of Protestantism, and the growth of sectarian divisions, ending with Dr. Hawker's ultra -Calvinistic Tracts, and Mr. Belsham's New Version of the Testament.
— from Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Do you feel well enough to come down?' Emily went down at once, almost with a sense of relief, and presented herself to the girls very much in her usual way.
— from A Life's Morning by George Gissing

In the past we have seen Christian peoples, transplanted in America, maintain the necessity of slavery, and we have seen, and continue to see every day, methods of reasoning which, when used by the defeated enemy were declared to be fallacious and wrong, become in turn, when varied only in form, the ideas and the customary life of the conquerors in the War—ideas which then assume the quality of liberal expressions of democracy.
— from Peaceless Europe by Francesco Saverio Nitti

The face that he turned upon me was a deep plum-pink from recent running and surmounted with fair hair whose disordered ends were darkened with moisture.
— from Tell England A Study in a Generation by Ernest Raymond

It was not until they were home again that she found a chance to corner Juhani by himself and demand eagerly: "What did they say?"
— from Our Little Finnish Cousin by Clara Vostrovsky Winlow

Drat 'ee, what d'ye mean by that! (Fel. goes round back of Kate's chair to stool R., and sits looking at photo.)
— from The Squire: An Original Comedy in Three Acts by Arthur Wing Pinero

‘But, oh, Mr. Berkeley, if you’d only seen that dear little woman, crying as if her heart would break, and telling me that dear Ernest was dying, actually dying; why—there—excuse me—I can’t help it, you know; we women are always crying about something or other, aren’t we?’
— from Philistia by Grant Allen