But the decision of this fact is left entirely to the Master, or presiding officer.
— from The Principles of Masonic Law A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages and Landmarks of Freemasonry by Albert Gallatin Mackey

But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

In hot countries, therefore, they make the streets of their cities very narrow, all over Spain, Africa, Italy, Greece, and many cities of France, in Languedoc especially, and Provence, those southern parts: Montpelier, the habitation and university of physicians, is so built, with high houses, narrow streets, to divert the sun's scalding rays, which Tacitus commends, lib. 15.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

"I am laughing," said he, "to think of the great head the pagan must have had who owned this helmet, for it looks exactly like a regular barber's basin."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

It is a fish, for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land animal, for it resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal’s fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal, for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian, for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when there isn’t, doesn’t.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

He would find it lively enough, I ventured to promise.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in America a Corporation.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, “Well, old son, I finished it last evening!
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

"And I'm not going to fall in love, even to please you," Alan added.
— from Sinister Street, vol. 1 by Compton MacKenzie

I loved you when first I laid eyes on you, when I lay feigning sleep in that chair by the hearth, when Lord Farquhart entertained his guests, when you took my part and begged that I might be let to sleep, when you vouched for my conscience.
— from Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 by Various

The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

He left the settled districts at the river now called the Alberga, which flows into Lake Eyre, and travelling north-west, made many determined attempts to cross the spinifex desert that had confronted him; but had to return beaten.
— from The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 by Ernest Favenc

Now that they were more intimate he found it less easy to control his temper; he was often irritable and could not help saying bitter things.
— from Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

There were temples rivaling those of Athens and Ephesus; baths covering more ground than the Pyramids, surrounded with Corinthian columns and filled with the choicest treasures, ransacked from the cities of Greece and Asia; palaces in comparison with which the Tuileries and Versailles are small; theatres which seated more people than any present public buildings in Europe; amphitheatres more extensive and costly than Cologne, Milan, and York Minster cathedrals combined, and seating eight times as many people as could be crowded into St. Peter's Church; circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges, still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass, and covered with bass-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and basilicae connected together, and extending more than three thousand feet, in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of conquerors, kings, and statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers; mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the spoils and trophies of conquered empires,—such was the proud capital— a city of palaces, a residence or nobles who were virtually kings, enriched with the accumulated treasures of ancient civilization.
— from The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. by John Lord

On the other hand, this redoubt could not be held when taken, for it lay exposed to the artillery of the French.
— from The Conquest of Canada, Vol. 2 by George Warburton

No Apostle of Liberty much to my heart ever found I; License each for himself, this was at bottom their want.
— from Leaves of Life, for Daily Inspiration by Margaret Bird Steinmetz