The [15] subject is treated continually in the public press, and in all forms of discussion, as though men, or at least working-men, had not now, and never could have, any choice or alternative, but either, on the one hand, to stifle their love for human society—at least in wider relations than can be found in a straggling village—or, on the other hand, to forego almost entirely all the keen and pure delights of the country.
— from Garden Cities of To-Morrow Being the Second Edition of "To-Morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform" by Howard, Ebenezer, Sir

His shapely, slim figure and broad shoulders gave evidence of a strong constitution, capable of enduring all the hardships of a nomad life and changes of climates, and of resisting with success both the demoralising effects of life in the Capital and the tempests of the soul.
— from A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov

[EPIKHODOV enters at the back of the stage playing his guitar.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

A bit of mirth comes into the somber atmosphere with a note from Theodore Tilton: To SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ADJUTANT-GENERAL—Since of late you have been bold in expressing your opinion that the draft should be strenuously enforced and that the broken ranks of our brave armies should be supplied with new men, it will serve to show you how great the difference is between those who say and those who do , if I inform you—as in duty bound I do hereby—that I know a little lady only half your size who doubles your zeal in all these respects and who, without waiting for your tardy example, presented on her own account to the government on Thursday last a new man, weighing nine pounds, to be enrolled among the infantry of the United States.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

Of course, the horses and mules at first refused to take to the water, and it was nearly a day's work to get them across, and even then some of our animals after crossing escaped into the woods and undergrowth that lined the river, but we secured enough of them to reach Sutter's Fort, three miles back from the embcarcadero, where we encamped at the old slough, or pond, near the fort.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid as if painted to the eye.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion; and even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me while he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of things to my disparagement, if he only chose to mention them.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

In the details of management, therefore, the local bodies will generally have the advantage, but in comprehension of the principles even of purely local management, the superiority of the central government, when rightly constituted, ought to be prodigious, not only by reason of the probably great personal superiority of the individuals composing it, and the multitude of thinkers and writers who are at all times engaged in pressing useful ideas upon their notice, but also because the knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge and experience, confined to their own part of the country and its modes of management, whereas the central government has the means of knowing all that is to be learned from the united experience of the whole kingdom, with the addition of easy access to that of foreign countries.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

I am very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I so much value, ‘tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

It evidently alludes to the famous archer, Adam Bell.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

After driving through a fine olive plantation we came out upon an extensive plain, where, in 1517, Sultan Selim defeated the last of the Mameluke Dynasty, and made Egypt a Turkish province.
— from Reminiscences of Travel in Australia, America, and Egypt by Tangye, Richard, Sir

Certain portions of it, especially near the close, were calculated to force upon the memory of each, analogies that were as distressing to the warm-hearted girl, as they were embarrassing to her parent.
— from The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by William Carleton

I have repeatedly asked gamekeepers and keepers at the Zoological Gardens whether animals could reason and converse with one another, and have always found myself regarded somewhat contemptuously for having even asked the question.
— from Essays on Life, Art and Science by Samuel Butler

he said to David, “what an escape!” and the Baroness’s invitation fell heavily back into the “refusals tray.”
— from The Oxford Circus: A Novel of Oxford and Youth by Hamish Miles

She speaks no word of English; and her soft black eyes are timid, though she is the widow of a general, and 115 in the stormy days of the City of the Angels, passed through many a crisis of peril and adventure.
— from Glimpses of Three Coasts by Helen Hunt Jackson

Prior to the days of the Georges, people knew this, and bright tiles and carvings and solid pillars gave a cheery look and countenance to the fire; and this style, thanks to the most sensible modern aesthetes, has come again into vogue, with handsome overmantels, kerbs, and dogs; but Mrs Alleyne’s fireside was chilly, the fender and fire-irons were well-polished, but attenuated and of skewery form as to the latter, sharp edge as to the former, while the narrow drab shelf that formed the mantelpiece had for ornaments two obelisks that appeared to have been cast in that objectionable meat-jelly known as brawn.
— from The Star-Gazers by George Manville Fenn

The mud ceilings crack very easily, and the white gypsum flakes off at the slightest touch.
— from Five Years in a Persian Town by Napier Malcolm

It was apparent that Robert, who had spent so much of his life in the forest, was fitted for great events and the stage upon which men of the world moved.
— from The Hunters of the Hills by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler