She may do it by blandishment, like Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but in every case the relation between the woman and the man is the same: she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued and disposed of.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

An acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell’s wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever.... (Renewed laughter.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Diligent in business but lazy in thought, satisfied with your paltriness and with the cloak of duty concealing this contentment: thus you live, and thus you like your children to be.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A false policy of continental extension swallowed up the resources of the country, and was doubly injurious because, by leaving defenceless its colonies and commerce, it exposed the gre
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

Beat well, let rise until double its bulk, beat, let rise in buttered bread pans until double its bulk, and bake one hour in moderately hot oven, or bake in gem pans thirty minutes.
— from Lowney's Cook Book Illustrated in Colors by Maria Willett Howard

The announcement in 1857 that a crack had been discovered in Big Ben led to an epigram in disparagement of Mr. Gladstone's rival, so Punch was able to have it both ways:—
— from Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 1 (of 4).—1841-1857 by Charles L. (Charles Larcom) Graves

The source of the 'Gabriel Ratchets,' the hell-hounds whose fear-inspiring yelps still are heard by the benighted peasant, who finds in the dread sound a warning of the approach of the angel of death; in the Norse Aasgaardsveia, the souls condemned 14 to ride about the world until doomsday, and who gallop through the midnight storm with shrieks and cries which ring over the lonely moors; or in that other troop of souls of the brave ones who had died in battle, being led by the storm-god Woden to Walhalla, also is undeniable.
— from Goblin Tales of Lancashire by James Bowker

That the government is privileged by all means, even by force of arms, to defend itself both by land and sea, against all who should attempt injury to the plantation or its inhabitants, and that in their opinion, any imposition prejudicial to the country, contrary to any just law of theirs, (not repugnant to the laws of England) would be an infringement of their rights.
— from The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States by John Marshall

swiftness of the poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold.
— from Turner by W. Cosmo (William Cosmo) Monkhouse

D., In big, brave letters fair to see,— Your fist, old fellow!
— from McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader by William Holmes McGuffey