After a pilgrimage of thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian, returned from Bagdad, a master of the language and learning of the Arabians; and Salerno was enriched by the practice, the lessons, and the writings of the pupil of Avicenna.
— 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

He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind—his honor.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Keep the gifts I gave thee, long rejected; Fabrics for thy lap from far Phocea, Babylonian unguents, scented sandals, And the costly mitra for thy tresses; Tripods worked in brass to flank the altar With the ivory figure of the Goddess; Where the sacrificial fumes from sacred Flames shall rise to gladden and appease her, In the hour when at her call thy fervid Breast and mouth to mine shall be relinquished.
— from The Poems of Sappho: An Interpretative Rendition into English by Sappho

That leisure to which work is directed and that perfection in which virtue would be fulfilled are so far from being apathetic that they are states of pure activity, by containing which other acts are rescued from utter passivity and unconsciousness.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

John has frequently been advised to have the old edifice thoroughly overhauled, and to have some of the useless parts pulled down, and the others strengthened with their materials; but the old gentleman always grows testy on this subject.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

"What can the fellow be about?
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the tides of Life, in Action's storm, A fluctuant wave, A shuttle free, Birth and the Grave, An eternal sea, A weaving, flowing Life, all-glowing, Thus at Time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares The garment of Life which the Deity wears!
— from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is good for wounds, falls, bruises, aposthumes, inflammations, ulcers in the privities.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks—hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t’other side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

We first had bidden adieu to the state of things which having existed many thousand years, seemed eternal; such a state of government, obedience, traffic, and domestic intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as memory could reach.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Of course I looked for him to try to escape at the first; but after he refused to use his gun to get away, I give up the notion, though I mind now he said plain he wa'n't willing to go to Frankfort.
— from Mothering on Perilous by Lucy S. Furman

When he fat he eat less on trail!" explained Firio, becoming almost voluble.
— from Over the Pass by Frederick Palmer

So greedy a repast must necessarily be followed by a slow and difficult digestion, and cannot be renewed at any very brief interval.
— from The Desert World by Arthur Mangin

There was a little reaction after this, and he saw the mule’s eyes closed and the two mustangs sniffing again at the farther barrel, and heard them sigh as if in weary disappointment at not being able to get at the contents.
— from The Peril Finders by George Manville Fenn

under the edge of the Frankish battle axe!"
— from The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps by Eugène Sue

Woe to thee, when men shall search Vainly for the Old South Church; When from Neck to Boston Stone, All thy pride of place is gone; When from Bay and railroad car, Stretched before them wide and far, Men shall only see a great Wilderness of brick and slate,
— from Occasional Poems Part 3 from Volume IV of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier

Besides—even if I felt better at this moment than a squirrel in the woods.
— from The Burgomaster's Wife — Volume 02 by Georg Ebers

The deep parental distress, however, of Menedemus, with which the play opens, forms but an inconsiderable part of it, as the son, Clinia, returns in the second act, and other incidents of a comic cast are then interwoven with the drama.
— from History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Vol. I by John Colin Dunlop

He held to his point without swerving; he was very friendly, but a little contemptuous perhaps of the excitement and trouble of Lewis, concluding in his heart that it was his foreign breeding, and that an Englishman (but, to Mr. Allenerly, even an Englishman was tant soit peu foreign), if ever he could have fallen into such an unlikely situation, would have taken care at least not to betray his emotion.
— from It was a Lover and His Lass by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Daniel was angrily shouldering for the Mormon 215 wagons, his indignant figure black against the western glow.
— from Desert Dust by Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand) Sabin