Solitary birds fly low over the plain, and a drowsy feeling comes with the monotonous beat of their wings.
— from The Duel and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Many came, no doubt, from curiosity to hear what a Negro could say in his own cause.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

I thanked him, and, turning from the main road, we entered a grass-grown by-path, which, in half an hour, nearly lost itself in a dense forest, clothing the base of a mountain.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Hardly more help toward understanding the subject is to be derived from certain expressions which deal with a determinate {308} and also with a determining trait of woman.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

[484] I retain the title of association by similarity in order not to depart from common usage.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

Wilfully to stir up religious strife and injuriously to abuse another faith are no deeds for Christians; voluntarily to transgress a law which carries with it capital punishment is not martyrdom, but suicide; and the pity we cannot help feeling for the "martyrs" of Cordova is the same that one entertains for many less exalted forms of hysterical disorder.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

Whatever Lucy might think about it herself, you know, it was no business of other people to set it down for certain.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Sires du Chastel du Gast, voisins prochain de Salebieres, comme chevaliers amoureus enprens à translater du Latin en François une partie de cette estoire, non mie pour ce que je sache gramment de François, ainz apartient plus ma langue et ma parleure à la manière de l'Engleterre que à celle de France, comme cel qui fu en Engleterre nez, mais tele est ma volentez et mon proposement, que je en langue françoise le translaterai."
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Moreover, there was altum silentium, and I really did not know what to do from cold, headache, and weariness.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When, for instance, it is said that wages are drawn from capital, the word capital is understood in the same sense as when we speak of the scarcity or abundance, the increase or decrease, the destruction or increment, of capital—a commonly understood and definite sense which separates capital from the other factors of production, land and labor, and also separates it from like things used merely for gratification.
— from Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth by Henry George

3 s. 6 d. ( Lotos Series. ) MacCARTHY, DENIS FLORENCE, Calderon’s Dramas.
— from The Life of a Conspirator Being a Biography of Sir Everard Digby by One of His Descendants by Thomas Longueville

This was arranged like a plot; they went out before day, and it was a delight for Cosette, as these innocent eccentricities please youth.
— from Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic by Victor Hugo

The Holy See is supported financially by a variety of sources, including investments, real estate income, and donations from Catholic individuals, dioceses, and institutions; these help fund the Roman Curia (Vatican bureaucracy), diplomatic missions, and media outlets.
— from The 2009 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

You see I was in my linsey-woolsey frock, not dressed for company.
— from Boys and Girls of Colonial Days by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

The direction in which the boat was steered, the mountain whence the divine Figure came forward and overtook the boat—all now appears to the mind’s eye in powerful vividness, in the setting of land and water that one has seen.
— from Letters from the Holy Land by Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson) Butler

But Tompkins could not fail to observe the party's growing dislike for Clinton, and, much as he wanted military success, he graciously declined Clinton's request, brought to him by Thomas Addis Emmet, to be assigned to active service in the field.
— from A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

Either his passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole’s (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James