This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate: for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

And how could this principle apply to the restoration to its original bulk of a part which had become thin through disease, where more matter must become attached than runs away?
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

In how many different ways may we play six dominoes, from an ordinary box of twenty-eight, so that the numbers on them may lie in arithmetical progression?
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

The bridesmaids should wear white dresses, white mantles, and bonnets, but not veils or orange flowers.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

But he, less easy of belief than his wife had been, declared that it could not be true that she knew not by whom she was with child and would altogether know who he was, adding that, by confessing it, she might regain his favour; else must she make ready to die without mercy.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

can it be possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from Harriet to me?—Absurd and insufferable!”—Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and at last would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her good manners.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

Round the head of the Duke were many beasts of prey and other sorts, signifying his nature and his character; and one of those his counsellors had in his hand the Palace of the Priors of the city, and was handing it to him, like a disloyal traitor to his country.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

desired to know the rank and order of precedence of the princes of the royal blood, both dukes and counts--as also that of the other princes, the barons, the nobles of the kingdom, the constables, the marshals of France and the admirals, and what position they had held on great public occasions during the reigns of his predecessors--he commissioned Jean du Tillet, the civil registrar of the Parliament of Paris, to search among the royal archives for the various authentic documents which might throw light on this question, and serve as a precedent for the future.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

And knowing that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some degree of perception would never naturally care for rational notions, but that it would be led away by phantoms and visions night and day,—to be a remedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it in the house of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitter quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight; and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole liver produces colours like bile, and contracting every part makes it wrinkled and rough; and twisting out of its right place and contorting the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes pain and loathing.
— from Timaeus by Plato

Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here—a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

"I am in your power," answered Dalaber; "you can do with me what you will."
— from For the Faith: A Story of the Young Pioneers of Reformation in Oxford by Evelyn Everett-Green

Jane dines with me, walk with her.
— from The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume 1 (of 2) by Marshall, Julian, Mrs.

It is she again who, on playing "the boat," and obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, "I would save my mother and drown with my mother-in-law."
— from The Ancient Regime by Hippolyte Taine

Johnson's Dict., w. Much .
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

The Japanese, who are Past Masters of the difficult art of living gracefully, pleasantly, satisfactorily, and with dignity, meet death with more self-control than any of their fellow Asiatics.
— from When We Were Strolling Players in the East by Louise Jordan Miln

I want to see into her heart, and shall be able to probe its depths with my tongue.
— from The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch by José Echegaray

When the rope gets taut, the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs.—I am much discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading Westward Ho !
— from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson

The National Pan-Russian Constituent Universal Duma which met this morning at ten-thirty, was dissolved at twenty-five minutes to eleven.
— from The Hohenzollerns in America With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities by Stephen Leacock

The English intellect at long last began to grasp the agrarian, though not the industrial side of the wrong that had been done to Ireland, and the English conscience was moved; there came the era of concessions to which I have alluded, and for over a quarter of a century attempts, often generous, if not very discriminating, were made to deal with the situation.
— from Ireland In The New Century by Plunkett, Horace Curzon, Sir

Now is it endit; bot, certis, na litill thyng 5 Has it cost sum man sik undertakyng: The godly power, wilfull vengeans to tak, Havand disdeyn at sik deray was mak, Onto tha wikkyt sawlys for the nanys Hes send condyng punytioun and just panys.
— from The Æneid of Virgil Translated Into Scottish Verse. Volumes 1 & 2 by Virgil