Marriage, like religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward requirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably all requirements.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

This speech—the style of which Newman attributed to Mr. Lillyvick’s recent association with theatrical characters—not being quite explanatory, Newman looked as if he were about to ask another question, when Mr. Lillyvick prevented him by shaking his hand mournfully, and then waving his own.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Nothing was left now but a few stumps of towers, hummocks upon the broad surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements over which, in their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones, the watchmen had gazed out over Novepont, Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec, Bailleau-l'Exempt, fiefs all of them of Guermantes, a ring in which Combray was locked; but fallen among the grass now, levelled with the ground, climbed and commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to me not the little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly different, seizing and holding my imagination by the remote, incomprehensible features which it half-concealed beneath a spangled veil of buttercups.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty alone; it extends from divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

The Queen Tarūb and the slave Nasr, however, exercised no light authority in political matters; but the singer Ziryāb confined his interest to matters of taste and culture, and refused to meddle in the vulgar strife of politics.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

Sanctity of the home does not exist; not long ago in Kalamba they entered, by forcing their way through the windows, the house of a peaceful inhabitant to whom their chief owed money and favors.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

The station which lawyers occupy in England and America exercises no less an influence upon their habits and their opinions.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

“As it is, she’s been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks, and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense,” she said to him.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

'Let me save you from this error,' said Emily, not less agitated—'it is my determination, and, if you reflect a moment on your late conduct, you will perceive, that my future peace requires it.'
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

Additional reason for supposing these magnificent birds to have existed not long ago, is found in the fact that specimens of their eggs have been preserved.
— from The Romance of Natural History, Second Series by Philip Henry Gosse

I am ready to assert that in quite modern English fiction there exists no large and impartial picture of the superior stolid comfortable which could give pleasure to a reader of taste.
— from Books and Persons; Being Comments on a Past Epoch, 1908-1911 by Arnold Bennett

There have been times when twenty-five pounds of shot have been expended by one gun, but those days exist no longer, and it is rare to use more than five pounds where the load does not exceed an ounce and a quarter.
— from The Game-Birds of the Coasts and Lakes of the Northern States of America A full account of the sporting along our sea-shores and inland waters, with a comparison of the merits of breech-loaders and muzzle-loaders by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt

If every noble lady, and in truth every woman, rightly knew how such virtuous demeanour becomes her, the more would she be at pains to possess this adornment rather than any other whatsoever, for no precious jewel is there which can adorn her so well.
— from The Book of the Duke of True Lovers by de Pisan Christine

Although the abdominal is probably subject to greater, over-all wear than any other lamina of the shell, wear is even, not localized as it is on the gulars and anals.
— from Natural History of the Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata Agassiz by John M. Legler

A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to attempt to discuss their origin.
— from Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02 by Thomas Henry Huxley

Belotti was standing in the entry, no longer attired in the silk hose and satin-bordered cloth garments of the steward, but in a plain burgher dress.
— from The Burgomaster's Wife — Volume 03 by Georg Ebers

It is scarce to be wondered that these uncourtly epistles excited no little astonishment in the English camp.
— from A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III by Henry Charles Lea