We impose no pennance on ourselves but what you recommend, lest we should rather follow an indiscreet zeal than solid virtue.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix'd a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Héloïse

When two varieties are formed in two districts of a continuous area, an intermediate variety will often be formed, fitted for an intermediate zone; but from reasons assigned, the intermediate variety will usually exist in lesser numbers than the two forms which it connects; consequently the two latter, during the course of further modification, from existing in greater numbers, will have a great advantage over the less numerous intermediate variety, and will thus generally succeed in supplanting and exterminating it.
— 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

When the sky is serene how gently it flows, And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays; But when the rains fall a torrent it goes Boiling and foaming through the rocky close, Roaring uncheck’d to the sea’s wide ways.
— from Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot by Austin Craig

The name had benumbed him again, and once more he felt as if Zeena were in the room between them.
— from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

As to Persons we have nothing to say to them, but this, without pretending to prophesy, may be safely advanced, that Heaven it self, has Eminently declared it self against the Fury and Immoderate Zeal of those Gentlemen, and told us as plainly as possible, unless we would Expect a Voice from on high, that he neither Has nor Designs to bless this Generation nor their proceedings.
— from The Lay-Man's Sermon upon the Late Storm Held forth at an Honest Coffee-House-Conventicle by Daniel Defoe

Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on the speel-wagen , which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.
— from The Legend of Ulenspiegel, Volume 1 (of 2) And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere by Charles de Coster

The jaguar, which, is very little known in Europe, is one of the scourges of Mexico, and would figure advantageously in zoological gardens.
— from Stronghand; or, The Noble Revenge by Gustave Aimard

who, when the gods, just installed on Olympus, met with men at Mekone to arrange with them as to their dues in sacrifice, came boldly forth as the representative and protector of the human race and slew a bullock in sacrifice, putting the flesh of it in one pile and the entrails with the bones in another, veiled temptingly with fat, and invited Zeus to make his choice, whereupon, knowing well what he was about, Zeus chose the latter, but in revenge took away with him the fire which had been bestowed by the gods upon mortals.
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

The chordal sheath is very thick and includes a well-marked zone of calcification which separates an outer zone of hyaline cartilage from an inner zone.
— from The Vertebrate Skeleton by Sidney H. (Sidney Hugh) Reynolds

In 1446 by a like eruption 10,000 persons were drowned in the territory of Dordrecht, and more than [228] 100,000 round Dullart, Friezeland, and in Zealand.
— from Buffon's Natural History, Volume 02 (of 10) Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Mineral, &c. &c by Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de

He was born in Calcutta, British India, in 1871, of Swiss-Italian parents; and, determined to be an artist, he studied, first architecture in Zurich, then painting in Munich.
— from A Modern Purgatory by Carlo de Fornaro

It would have helped on every good work by auxiliary forces drawn from intelligent faith and instructed zeal.
— from Life of Father Hecker by Walter Elliott

He made a fine bow, and he said he was 'pleased too see ze fine audience, and he was going to show zem ze fine animals, ze finest animals in ze world.'
— from Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography by Marshall Saunders