Then there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

So what with the distressingly strange conversation with my teacher, my own friendless condition, and Yram’s melancholy, I felt more unhappy than I can describe, and remained so till I got to bed, and sleep sealed my eyelids.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

“Now,” said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, “what do you want?”
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Sydney Smith, who had amused, was dead; so was Macaulay, who instructed if he did not amuse; Thackeray died at Christmas, 1863; Dickens never felt at home, and seldom appeared, in society; Bulwer Lytton was not sprightly; Tennyson detested strangers; Carlyle was mostly detested by them; Darwin never came to town; the men of whom Motley must have been thinking were such as he might meet at Lord Houghton's breakfasts: Grote, Jowett, Milman, or Froude; Browning, Matthew Arnold, or Swinburne; Bishop Wilberforce, Venables, or Hayward; or perhaps Gladstone, Robert Lowe, or Lord Granville.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

The decisions seemed charged with consequences to the future of human society; yet the air whispered that the word was not flesh, that it was futile, insignificant, of no effect, dissociated from events; and one felt most strongly the impression, described by Tolstoy in War and Peace or by Hardy in The Dynasts , of events marching on to their fated conclusion uninfluenced and unaffected by the cerebrations of Statesmen in Council: Spirit of the Years Observe that all wide sight and self-command Deserts these throngs now driven to demonry By the Immanent Unrecking.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

SUBTLE, fine, delicate, thin; smooth, soft. SUBTLETY (SUBTILITY), subtle device. SUBURB, connected with loose living.
— from Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson

[page 20] If anie wight a cruell mistris serue's ° , 260 Or, in dispaire, (unhappie) pines and staru's ° , Curse Eunuke dilldo, senceless counterfet ° Who sooth maie fill, but never can begett.
— from The Choise of Valentines; Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo by Thomas Nash

These treaties were so foule & abhominable, with the iniurious wordes which Pamfilo de Naruaez spake openly against Cortes and his men, yea they séemed odious vnto all his owne hoste & army, and some of his own mē checked him for the same, especially Barnardino de Santa Clara , who seyng the countrey so peaceable and so well pleased with Cortes , he could not let but reprehende Naruaez in his wordes.
— from The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne atchieued by the vvorthy Prince Hernando Cortes, marques of the Valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to reade by Francisco López de Gómara

To the right the towers of Rouen stood out against the sky, and to the left the landscape was bounded by the distant slopes covered with trees.
— from Original Short Stories — Volume 04 by Guy de Maupassant

To be sure, he received a bullet in his temple; and the dark, silken curls were dank and stiff with gore when the sun lighted up the low adobe room next morning.
— from Overland Tales by Josephine Clifford

Although the day was coming on apace and danger of discovery grew with it, the dauntless Scotch commander would not give up his project until every expedient had been exhausted.
— from The Story of John Paul Jones by Chelsea Curtis Fraser