We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of another and modified species, if we were to examine the two ever so closely, unless we possessed most of the intermediate links; and owing to the imperfection of the geological record, we have no just right to expect to find so many links.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

It is the same with people in the world; they are rubbed about on this spherical globe till the electric spark comes upon them, and then we have a Napoleon, or a Luther, or some one of the kind.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

She did not like to tell the noble canon, and thinking that I was more likely to be acquainted with such emergencies she came up to me and told me all.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The motion of the engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled, and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and such silence it was!
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

He then signalled to haul close to the wind and wear in succession , which also failed to be done, and at five minutes past nine the dreaded contingency arose; the wind hauled to the southward, knocking off all the French ships that had not yet kept away; that is, all who had English ships close under their lee (Plate XXI. C).
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

Within a while the earth shall cover us all, and then she herself XXVIII.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image and, when the first notes of the song struck her ear, she caught up her daughter’s cloak and said to her husband: “Get a cab!”
— from Dubliners by James Joyce

En qué estado se coge un cordero para matarlo?
— from A First Spanish Reader by Erwin W. (Erwin William) Roessler

It was, nevertheless, an interesting revelation to him, since it proved to him again how unreal "LeVallon" was; how easily, quickly this educated simulacrum caught up, assimilated and reproduced as his own, [149] yet honestly, whatever was in the air at the moment.
— from The Bright Messenger by Algernon Blackwood

But I know: his example should console us all."
— from The Last of the Barons — Volume 03 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Above all, the style should be clear and perspicuous, which can only arise, as I before observed, from a harmony in the composition: one thing perfected, the next which succeeds should be coherent with it; knit together, as it were, by one common chain, which must never be broken: they must not be so many separate and distinct narratives, but each so closely united to what follows, as to appear one continued series.
— from Trips to the Moon by of Samosata Lucian

“English; some calls us Flamings.”
— from Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery by George Borrow

Full free trade would supply, quicken, and facilitate the operation of those large economic forces which we have seen at work: the tendency of capital to gravitate into larger and fewer masses, localised where labour can be maintained upon the most economical terms: a correspondent but slower and less complete organisation of labour in large masses: the flow of labouring population into towns, together with a larger utilisation of women and (where permitted) children for industrial work: a growing keenness of antagonism as the mass of the business-unit is larger, and an increased expenditure of productive power upon aggressive commercial warfare: the growth of monopolies springing from natural, social, or economic sources, conferring upon individuals or classes the power to consume without producing, and by their consumption to direct the quantity and character of large masses of labour.
— from The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production by J. A. (John Atkinson) Hobson

and how dared he sit beside Mistress Mary as though it were his right, and keep his evil eyes so constantly upon her face as he was doing now?
— from In Taunton town : a story of the rebellion of James Duke of Monmouth in 1685 by Evelyn Everett-Green