On observing the ground, I saw that it was raised in certain places by slight excrescences encrusted with limy deposits, and disposed with a regularity that betrayed the hand of man.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

But that faire crew of knights, and Una faire 430 Did in that castle afterwards abide, To rest them selves, and weary powres repaire, Where store they found of all that dainty was and rare.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser

After David, who also reigned forty years, his son Solomon was king of Israel, who built that most noble temple of God at Jerusalem.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Among the same is Maestro Dino del Garbo, a most excellent physician of that time, dressed as was then the wont of doctors, with a red bonnet lined with miniver on his head, and held by the hand by an angel; with many other portraits that are not recognized.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply from within.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue; She's just a devil wi' a rung; An' if she promise auld or young To tak their part, Tho' by the neck she should be strung, She'll no desert.
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to where YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas," which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to place the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness," precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the EXTENT to which a man could stretch his responsibility Nowadays the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age—such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

According to the Hebrew mythology this habitation of demons was a realm of perpetual cold and midnight, which Jehovah, in creating the world, purposely left chaotic; so it was prepared for the Devil and his angels at the foundation of the world.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

Dorothy was almost ready to cry with disappointment.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

Her curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good temper or the reverse.
— from The Night Side of London by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie

If rebirth occurs later, to either or both, the individual conscience—which is the Spirit, must decide whether, as regards each other, they are bound or free, and we must stand or fall by that.
— from The Inside of the Cup — Complete by Winston Churchill

Our Sauage made signes in answere from them that our men should be deliuered vs, and were yet liuing, and made signes likewise vnto vs that we should write our letters vnto them, for they knew very well the vse we haue of writing, and receiued knowledge thereof, either of our poore captiue countreymen which they betrayed, or else by this our new captiue who hath seene vs dayly write and repeate againe such words of his language as we desired to learne: but they for this night, because it was late, departed without any letter, although they called earnestly in hast for the same.
— from The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation — Volume 12 America, Part I by Richard Hakluyt

All this was done with a rapidity and assurance for which Odo was unprepared; but, reflecting that Fulvia's whole future hung on the promptness with which each detail of her plan was executed, he concluded that her natural force of character enabled her to assume an ease she could hardly feel.
— from The Valley of Decision by Edith Wharton

When we ask what are the inventions and discoveries which are really destined to grow from seeds of the nineteenth into trees of the twentieth century, we are at once confronted with the same kind of difficulty which would present itself to one who, standing in the midst of an ancient forest, should be requested to indicate in what spots the wide-spreading giants of the next generation of trees might be expected to grow.
— from Twentieth Century Inventions: A Forecast by George Sutherland

The day was a rarely beautiful one, and was observed as a general holiday by the people of both cities.
— from Peculiarities of American Cities by Willard W. Glazier

Her dress was a rich, dull white of plain and unpretentious pattern.
— from The conquest of Rome by Matilde Serao

Meantime they received daily wages and rations from the Government at Brussels, including thirty stivers a day for each horseman, thirteen crowns a day for the Eletto, and ten crowns a day for each counsellor, making in all five hundred crowns a day.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley