He had no compunction about falsifying a requisition, or stealing what he could not obtain with apparent honesty.
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone

For a robe of sable, large enough to line a mantle, is worth 2000 bezants of gold, or 1000 at least, and this kind of skin is called by the Tartars "The King of Furs."
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Some close observers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of countenance, with a corresponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice a painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she were on the point of sinking to the ground.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

To what has been said in the text, may be added the following apposite remarks of Squier: "In the absence of a written language or forms of expression capable of conveying abstract ideas, we can readily comprehend the necessity, among a primitive people, of a symbolic system.
— from The Symbolism of Freemasonry Illustrating and Explaining Its Science and Philosophy, Its Legends, Myths and Symbols by Albert Gallatin Mackey

At the moment when she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been planted against the cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the Janizaries themselves; and were at length overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and charged on all sides this handful of intrepid warriors.
— 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

Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush?
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The immense expense, fatigue, and risk of such a journey made a previous consideration of them, and weighing every difficulty, the first step necessary.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holyday (a "whole day's leave" we called it at Christ's Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well provisioned either for such an undertaking, to trace the current of the New River—Middletonian stream!—to its scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

And just as this repudiation of big words and big visions has brought forth a race of small men in politics, so it has brought forth a race of small men in the arts.
— from Heretics by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

I can do no better than quote in this connection a paragraph from the "Religions of Japan" by W.E. Griffis: "From the prehistoric days when the custom of 'Junshi,' or dying with the master, required the interment of living retainers with their dead lord, down through all the ages to the Revolution of 1868, when at Sendai and Aidzu scores of men and boys opened their bowels, and mothers slew their infant sons and cut their own throats, there has been flowing a river of suicides' blood having its springs in devotion of retainers to masters, and of soldiers to a lost cause....
— from Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic by Sidney Lewis Gulick

That plain but substantial edifice, under the shadow of the great oak tree hard by the old church, is a parish school-house, in which perhaps are gathered some fifty or sixty boys and girls, from all ranks of society, plying their mental tasks, under the supervision of an intelligent schoolmaster.
— from The Genius of Scotland; or, Sketches of Scottish Scenery, Literature and Religion by Robert Turnbull

France was ready to make peace in 1735; so she calmly offered Charles VI the three duchies in exchange for a recognition of Spanish Charles as king of the Two Sicilies.
— from A History of Spain founded on the Historia de España y de la civilización española of Rafael Altamira by Rafael Altamira

On the descent, we had often to dismount and lead our horses; one of the pack-horses fell, and rolled over several times before he could regain a footing.
— from Travels in the Interior of Brazil Principally through the northern provinces, and the gold and diamond districts, during the years 1836-1841 by George Gardner

The Keeper of the Seals has sent me word of this by an orderly on horseback, whom this simpleton took for a regiment of soldiers in pursuit of him.
— from Pamela Giraud: A Play in Five Acts by Honoré de Balzac

He waited for a reply of some sort, but Layton only bowed his head stiffly, and suffered him to continue: “I am a sorry diplomatist, doctor, and have not the vaguest idea of how to approach a point of any difficulty; but what brought me here this morning was simply this: you sent that letter”—here
— from One Of Them by Charles James Lever

Chateaubriand, F. A. R., on Shakespeare, 285 .
— from Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille by Benedetto Croce