* ‘Come, my head’s free at last!’ said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay far below her.
— from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

With great difficulty he found a publisher, and for the great work, now the most honored poem in our literature, he received less than certain verse makers of our day receive for a little song in one of our popular magazines.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

This view has the great advantage of exhibiting morality as essentially reasonable, but the accompanying disadvantage of lowering it into a somewhat prosaic and unideal Prudentialism, nor is it saved from this by the tacking on to it, by a sort of after-thought, of the second and higher Ideal—an addition which ruins the coherence of the account without really transmuting its substance The source of our dissatisfaction with the whole theory lies deeper than in its tendency to identify the end with the maximum of enjoyment or satisfaction, or to regard the goodness or badness of acts and feelings as lying solely in their efficacy to produce such a result It arises from the application to morality of the distinction of means and end For this distinction, for all its plausibility and usefulness in ordinary thought and speech, cannot finally be maintained In morality—and this is vital to its character—everything is both means and end, and so neither in distinction or separation, and all thinking about it which presupposes the finality of this distinction wanders into misconception and error.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

These hopes I would not have sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.
— from Phaedo by Plato

These form the advance troupe of emigrants from the Parish of Tin in Upper Telemarken, a region which furnished a large share of recruits for the pioneer colonies of Wisconsin and Iowa in the forties and the fifties.
— from A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States From the Earliest Beginning down to the Year 1848 by George T. (George Tobias) Flom

The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Well, I went over and sat down by Henry's bed and I says to him, says I, jest right out plain and simple, for if a thing's got to be told it may as well be told first as last, says I, 'Mate, I reckon you've got your sailing orders this time,' I was sorter quaking inside, for it's an awful thing to have to tell a man who hain't any idea he's dying that he is.
— from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

La culture di caféier au Brésil, communication faite a la Société nationale d'acclimation de France.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

My private favorites are: LIST - Shareware MS-DOS file viewing program, LOOKFOR - Shareware boolean text search program.
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno

The wrath of God slept often for a long season; He saw as one who saw not.
— from The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 by Thomas De Quincey

The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
— from Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man by Marie Conway Oemler

There followed a long silence.
— from Jane Cable by George Barr McCutcheon

"Where are you going, my dear?" said Mrs. Asbury, looking up from a letter she was writing to Helen.
— from Beulah by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

When a Ship keeps off from any Land, she is said to bear off from it.
— from A Naval Expositor Shewing and Explaining the Words and Terms of Art Belonging to the Parts, Qualities and Proportions of Building, Rigging, Furnishing, & Fitting a Ship for Sea by Thomas Riley Blanckley

The captain, who is reckoned one of the worst men in the regiment to venture with in the way of repartee, was so amazed at the damsel's ignorance that he answered never a word, leaving some of her friends in muslin on the garden chairs around to explain the difference between fishing with and without a float—a duty which they appeared to perform with true womanly relish as a set-off against the previous scoring of the pert maid from Mayfair, who had borne rather heavily upon them from a London season elevation.
— from Lines in Pleasant Places: Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler by William Senior

"Something to be thankful for at least," said Sukkestad.
— from Dry Fish and Wet: Tales from a Norwegian Seaport by Anthon Bernhard Elias Nilsen