I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Unfilled is a cavity left, and this cavern, Roofed over, capacious enough for a camp.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

All the columns will dress to the left (which is the exposed flank), and commanders will study always to find roads by which they can, if necessary, perform a general left wheel, the wagons to be escorted to some place of security on the direct route of march.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

He was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class—exceptionally well educated for a common soldier.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

The walls of the room were bare except for a copy of an election address.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce

One of these relates how, about 1258 A.D., Sheik Omar, a disciple of Sheik Abou'l hasan Schadheli, patron saint and legendary founder of Mocha, by chance discovered the coffee drink at Ousab in Arabia, whither he had been exiled for a certain moral remissness.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

Belisarius rejected with equal firmness and contempt the offer of a tribute; but he allowed the Gothic ambassadors to seek their fate from the mouth of Justinian himself; and consented, with seeming reluctance, to a truce of three months, from the winter solstice to the equinox of spring.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

But you must dry your eyes first, and compose yourself.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

they are plenty good enough for a corpse,” she said in Sylvie’s ear.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Explanations followed and compliments began to fly.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

On being desired to write it over again, she had obeyed with a very bad grace, and some murmurs about Cocksmoor, and produced the second specimen, which, in addition to other defects, had some elisions from arrant carelessness, depriving it of its predecessor’s merits of being good French.
— from The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

Well, how I reason it out is this way: If five pfennigs is enough for a car conductor, who may carry you three miles, why shouldn't it be enough for the elevator boy, who may carry you only three stories?"
— from Europe After 8:15 by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

"He was making an endless fuss about choosing his dress," said the Dog.
— from The Blue Bird for Children The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness by Maurice Maeterlinck

This reserve of rapture may be their delicacy, their unwillingness to awaken envy in the less prospered; and I should not have objected to the swells at the Horse Show looking dreary if they had looked more like swells; except for a certain hardness of the countenance (which I found my own sympathetically taking on)
— from Short Stories and Essays (from Literature and Life) by William Dean Howells

Outside there stands an envoy from Athens come to beg you to return.
— from Historical Miniatures by August Strindberg

Extract from a Canadian business-circular:— "What intelligent car owners have been looking for is a tire that will give them a minimum amount of service for a maximum amount of expenditure.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 by Various

They may cut down salaries; lower the defences of the country; abolish expensive forms and ceremonies; amalgamate a few boards of direction; reduce the civil list; and do away with all sinecures.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849 by Various

If we trace him back to a primeval cell, the primeval cell that could become a man is more mysterious by far than the man that was evolved from a cell.
— from Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885 by Various

It has been represented as having eight feet, a crown on the head, and a hooked and recurved beak.
— from Folk-lore of Shakespeare by T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer