One day–it was the day of Philip's return–Lucy had formed a sudden engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. Kenn, whose delicate state of health, threatening to become confirmed illness through an attack of bronchitis, obliged her to resign her functions at the coming bazaar into the hands of other ladies, of whom she wished Lucy to be one.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

In a note to the printer, sent with the final stanzas, Scott writes: "I send the grand finale, and so exit the Lady of the Lake from the head she has tormented for six months.
— from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott

They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but also to moral causes—to the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people, and which in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful supporters of their own national power and glory.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

17 The new province of Dacia, which formed a second exception to the precept of Augustus, was about thirteen hundred miles in circumference.
— 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

No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou?
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Long fits of abstraction succeeded; Annette spoke repeatedly, but her voice seemed not to make any impression on the sense of the long agitated Emily, who sat fixed and silent, except that, now and then, she heaved a heavy sigh, but without tears.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

I often say, that it is mere folly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; their fertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The religions have, in fact, a sufficiently easy task.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

In the highly artificial and materialistic bases of modern civilization, with the corresponding arrangements and methods of living, the force-infusion of intellect alone, the depraving influences of riches just as much as poverty, the absence of all high ideals in character—with the long series of tendencies, shapings, which few are strong enough to resist, and which now seem, with steam-engine speed, to be everywhere turning out the generations of humanity like uniform iron castings—all of which, as compared with the feudal ages, we can yet do nothing better than accept, make the best of, and even welcome, upon the whole, for their oceanic practical grandeur, and their restless wholesale kneading of the masses—I say of all this tremendous and dominant play of solely materialistic bearings upon current life in the United States, with the results as already seen, accumulating, and reaching far into the future, that they must either be confronted and met by at least an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritualization, for the pure conscience, for genuine esthetics, and for absolute and primal manliness and womanliness—or else our modern civilization, with all its improvements, is in vain, and we are on the road to a destiny, a status, equivalent, in its real world, to that of the fabled damned.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Father and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand flight of steps near the clump of trees on the side of the Rue Madame.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

But just here Mr. Kendall came hurrying from the sitting-room to tell of one incident which he had hitherto forgotten, and so even this brief interval of privacy was denied.
— from The Portygee by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

They preserved the customs of their ancestors, rising with the sun, frankly and splendidly enjoying the sun, looking up to it as the most important thing in the world.
— from Sacred and Profane Love: A Novel in Three Episodes by Arnold Bennett

The clergy will put forth almost superhuman efforts to shut away the light, lest it should shine upon their flocks.
— from The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan by Ellen Gould Harmon White

The stained glass of its oriel window is very beautiful; the handsomely gilded ceiling and pannelled walls have a fine and striking effect; the floor is paved in marble, with inlaid mosaic; the shelves of rosewood and oak are filled with the most costly productions of literature, ancient and modern.
— from Lady Rosamond's Secret: A Romance of Fredericton by Rebecca Agatha Armour

Mobilized the second day, this man was much afraid that he could not get through the marches, and asked for a special examination to determine whether his feet did not make him unsuitable for fatigue.
— from Shell-Shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems Presented in Five Hundred and Eighty-nine Case Histories from the War Literature, 1914-1918 by Elmer Ernest Southard

She opened her fingers and, sure enough, the little bottle fell right on the deck and broke all in little pieces, and the glistening drops splashed over the bow, and so the good ship "White Swan" got her name.
— from Seven O'Clock Stories by Robert Gordon Anderson

Then the hot blood rushed to his face and showed even through the bronze as, turning, his troubled eyes met full the clear, placid gaze of Amy Lawrence.
— from Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters by Charles King

For a Subspace Engineer, Trigger had thought skeptically, he was a pretty good grabber.
— from Legacy by James H. Schmitz

The Ten Reasons represent the ten theses , which Edmund Campion would fain have maintained in the Divinity School at Oxford against all comers, sharing, as he did to the full, the passion which his age felt and seems entirely to have lost, for such intellectual tournaments, as the natural means to bring out the truth and compose religious differences.
— from Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities by Campion, Edmund, Saint

She said she had friends living near San Francisco, and she expected to reside a short time with them; perhaps she might remain in that place through the winter, and perhaps not; could not tell; would write again.
— from The Underground World: A mirror of life below the surface by Thomas Wallace Knox