Then, making me keep my place, he sat down by me, and would have taken my hand; but I drew it back, and said I could not stay.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

He carried a wooden canteen and an old battered telescope, worn crosswise by two leather straps, and had several silver medals, won doubtless in battle against Schamyl in Circassia.
— from Under the Red Dragon: A Novel by James Grant

For this reason it is eternal and indestructible, and to destroy it by abstraction (since it cannot be done by thought) is equivalent to imagining the death of the spirit, as confirmed in the saying that abstraction is death.
— from Theory & History of Historiography by Benedetto Croce